Hi Ron,
As usual much food for thought (and rebuttal?)... Let's see where this takes us...
ron2
I must say, LCK, if humans thought of dogs as needing to connect with things in the environment, it might improve their relations to a dog, even though I think it's anthropromorphising, again.
I'm glad you agree that my idea might help dog/human relations. That's certainly one of my goals (the main one).
However, I don't think it's anthropomorphic to suggest that there's a universal force that impels dogs to form connections any more than it is to say that a similar force is what impels hydrogen and oxygen atoms to connect in order to form a water molecule. Like dogs, atoms don't "think" about it; it's an energetic process. That particular connection (H2O) was the start of the evolution of life on earth. And evolution couldn't do its work if it didn't have a mechanism at its disposal to impel, motivate, or induce all organisms -- from amoebae to plants to fish to human beings -- to be motivated to connect to the kinds of energy (food, water, sunlight) necessary to sustain their particular physical apparatuses long enough for make another kind of connection -- this one sexual in nature -- to ensure that each organism's genetic material would be passed on. Without those two forms of attraction life on earth could not exist.
ron2
Dogs scavenge because that is how one gathers resources.
Yes, but don't you see? My explanation (borrowed from Freud, who theorized that there's a universal force that impels us to make connections) is far less anthropomorphic than the idea that dogs are concerned with gathering "resources." Does a dog go for a walk and think to himself, "I think I'll sniff around a bit to see if I can gather some resources," or does he just feel attracted to certain things he sees and smells, and is not as attracted to others? In your explanation the dog is thinking about what he's doing; in mine he's just feeling something, physically and emotionally.
Then there's the very real dilemma of explaining why a dog who's fed regular meals would need to scavenge. It can't be because he's hungry. There has to be something else going on.
ron2
Your dog turned to you, which shows just how different he is from the coyote or wolf. ... Now, of course, I must ask, if your dog was not just recently fed, would he have come to you as quickly ... He who gets the resources survives. And perhaps the dog thought you had a greater resource than the lucky treasure he found. [italics mine -LCK]
Again, you're relying on a rather complicated, linear mental thought process to explain the behavior. And that's fine. It's not unheard of. But according to Ockham's razor and Morgan's canon, we should always look for the more parsimonious explanation first.
ron2
Because it is rewarding to follow the resource that leads to survival. Survival of the fittest is not just who is the fastest or strongest. It is also who is smartest and the dog that finds the easiest, quickest way to resources lives.
Do you think dogs are aware of their own mortality? Do they understand what death is? Do you believe they understand what "resources" are? What does "smartest" mean in this context?
When I think of a dog's level of intelligence -- in comparison to that of another dog, eg. -- I see it more as a matter of who's better at making connections between himself and the salient objects in his environment. He's not thinking about survival. He's just thinking about what feels good to him at a particular moment. This is something dogs excel at. In fact, they're quite brilliant in this regard.
ron2
So, I don't think dogs have an expressed need to connect, as one might describe in humans. But if we describe it that way and it gives humans a better way to relate to and treat their pet dogs, then I could overlook it. I just don't think it's accurate. To suggest that dogs have this human like emotion of needing to connect, and yet, in the next breath, do everything possible to deny they have ToM or that they can communicate and other "human"-like characteristics is also an interesting dichotomy.
You're right. This is a very interesting discussion.
Just to be clear, though, I never said that dogs can't or don't communicate. I said very specifically that there are two basic types of communication, 1) reporting information and 2) expressing an unconscious emotional state. The first requires both the use of language and a very highly developed theory of mind (a theoretical construct used by cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind which may or may not relate, in a complete and accurate way, to what's really going on in our minds and in the minds of us or our dogs).
Remember, there are 3 levels of ToM: sensory, emotional, and mental. In order for dogs to have the third they would have to have somehow cut in line on the evolutionary ladder, way ahead of many other species. And they would also have to have a very different type of brain, with millions (perhaps billions) more neurons, etc., and have more complex structural components to their brains than they do. This would mean that one of the key principles of evolution is invalid, and that the size and structure of an animal's brain has no real correlation with its cognitive abilities, at least not where dogs are concerned.
So the real question is, how do we account for a dog's abilities without rewriting the laws of evolution and neuroscience?
I think the answer is simple, yet perhaps not as easily "understood" as the idea that dogs are "smart." They manipulate us into doing their thinking for them. They hijack our brains through a process called embodied, embedded cognition.
Excerpt from the article linked to, just above:
Dogs read us and react, read us and react, read us and react, over and
over. And we project our own emotions and thought processes onto their
reactions, based in large part on our personal beliefs and identities.
As a result, our reactions, in the moment, reinforce whatever small behavioral changes the dog exhibits in response to us
in an almost continuous loop. This happens repeatedly, countless
numbers of times every day, even when we're not thinking about it. And
as a result, the dog begins to reflect back to us many of the same
things we're unconsciously projecting onto them.
And:
The human mind is designed to find reasons for things, even things that don't have
reasons ... whenever we see a dog stop for a moment to make choices about which
action he wants to take, or pause to "feel things out," we
automatically (and mostly unconsciously) believe the dog is "thinking
things through," i.e., using an innate ability to reason.
There
are several reasons for this. One is that dogs have faces. And one of
the primary social circuits in the human brain is designed to recognize
not only the faces of people we know but to 'intuit' what the
expressions on those faces 'mean.' These [pattern-recognition] circuits are equipped with a
lot of dopamine receptors, making face recognition a kind of natural high.
When
we see footage of wolves hunting together, for example, our analysis of
what we think is going in their minds (which probably goes back to the
Darwinian idea of species having adaptive "strategies";) is that the
wolves are planning their attack; they've got a "game plan." We see it
in their faces. Yet when we see a spider go into a hole and pull a leaf
over himself to "hide" from his prey, do we believe the spider is
thinking this through logically? Does it have a game plan? [A theory of mind?] Of course
not. And one of the reasons we don't [anthropomorphize spiders the way we do our dogs] that is that a spider's "face"
is expressionless.
Another reason we believe dogs use logic and
reason may be that dogs don't feel themselves to be separate from us,
and on a certain level we don't feel separate from them. Many pet owners
report that they grieve more over the loss of a favorite pet than they
do over the loss of a parent,
a close friend, or a spouse. These owners say that losing the pet is
like losing a part of themselves. That may be because parents, spouses,
and friends have ego boundaries. Dogs don't. As a result it becomes
easier for us to see our dogs as indivisible from our own thoughts,
making us susceptible to the belief that they think more like we do than
the size and shapes of their brains would suggest or support.
I have no illusions that I'm going to pry the idea that dogs think logically, rationally, or conceptually out of some people's minds. No matter how simply and logically I present these ideas, some people -- even some of the most brilliant scientists! -- are so heavily wedded to their bedrock, dead certainty that dogs think like us (just on a simpler level), that it's impossible to get them to even consider alternative explanations for their behavior.
That said, there are certain self-evident facts that need to be taken into account. Nature is an economist. So is evolution. What I mean by this is that they both have to act in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics, particularly when it comes to the first law: the conservation of energy. I will admit that dogs seem to be able to act independently of this law. No matter how amazing dogs are, I just don't see how it's possible for them to circumvent the laws of nature.
So until science can show us how a dog's mind could act independently of the laws of physics, evolution, and some of the most basics tenets of neuroscience, I don't see any other course than to look for simpler explanations for their behavior. And it seems to me that the idea that dogs are always looking to make connections is far less anthropomorphic than the idea that they're thinking about resources or their own survival.
Anyway, that's how I see it,
LCK