Theory of Mind

mudpuppy

you know, I don't think it's possible to prove a human has a TOM, let alone a dog. If children don't start displaying TOM-traits until what, age three or four? it could all be conditioned behaviors not TOM.

The thing about providing scientific evidence about mental states/knowledge, is how can you empirically test something you can't observe? This is where language comes in handy- it allows participants to describe their knowledge/beliefs. This may explain why the development of ToM in humans coincides with the development of language (at about 3-4yrs) and is the reason why it is practically impossible to design a test that provides strong, unequivocal results supporting a ToM in preverbal children or animals.

Lee Charles Kelley

"Could there have been a specific time, where when the 1st dog had the toy, and the 2nd dog wanted it really badly, that the 2nd dog heard a noise at the front door, and in her already energized state, ran to the door to begin barking as a way not necessarily of alerting to danger, but just downloading some of the excess tension she felt about not being able to connect to the toy? If she had," I conjectured, "and her barking brought the 1st dog running, and if the 1st dog's barking was always stronger and more insistent than her own, perhaps she stopped barking at the door, letting her "packmate" take over. And since the door situation was well in hand, she was almost magnetically pulled back to the spot where she'd originally been energized. She found and grabbed the toy, and a learned behavior was born. Could that have been the genesis of this behavior?

Interesting but that seemed a bit of a reach just to avoid ToM. While Occam's Razor means that the least complicated explanation is usually the best one, that is not always the case. On the other hand, how much more quantum fields could we go through when it's just possible that dogs have theory of mind? That is, while dogs may not have the level of abstract thought that we do and may not generalize as we do, do those limitations preclude having a theory of mind? How many times do we compare to ourselves? And if a creature isn't just like us, then it's not sentient at all? My dog has limited tool use. I've seen him move the bed covers around to get the cool sheets, not unlike digging a shallow pit in the ground to get a cool spot. Moving and carrying toys as if they were a talisman.

I also think of a video I saw of a dog that would arrange toys in specific geometric patterns, as well as human like patterns (teddy bears hugging each other.) While I firmly believe in the effectiveness of clicker training and the skinnerism it implies, I don't see how that would also deny "higher" brain function.

corvus

Children don't need to be taught a ToM. It comes naturally on its own with ongoing social interactions. I've seen it tested by someone putting a button in a piggy bank, then asking the child what a friend that wasn't present would think was in the money box. Kids without a ToM say "buttons" whereas kids with a ToM say "money" and laugh. Another example is kids talking on the phone and answering a question by nodding or shaking their heads because they don't realise the person on the other end doesn't know they are making those gestures.

By the age a child is this verbal I believe they have been taught ToM.  When a mother says don't hit (your friend, your sister, your dog) and the child asks why, the mother would say because it hurts them.  While I think that we have an innate capacity to understand ToM, I do believe it has to be taught kind of like language itself.  Humans have an innate capacity to use language, but if they are not taught to use language, they won't have any or at least they will not have complex language skills.  To prove a child has not been taught a ToM but that it is innate, you would need to isolate the child from any social learning.

And I don't think that the puppy immediately associates the yelp with a withdraw from playing, or at least that the withdraw from playing is the immediate cause for the puppy to stop biting.  I think that would argue for an even higher level of abstaction.  If any non-ToM explaination is valid, I would argue that dogs are genetically programmed to stop biting when they hear that yelp.  However, that instinctual explaination ignores the fact that dogs ignore prey animals high-pitched yelps when they are hunting if fact in that situation it excites the dog and encourages the dog to hurt the prey-animal more.