As our discussion of week-ends below shows, they don't.Why would they need to think exactly the same way we do in order to be considered rational? — Vera Mont
That's true. But one feels that the version for other people is not the truth, because it doesn't represent the dog's point of view accurately. The difference may never make any difference. But it might possible, so pedants like me like to have both versions at hand to use as and when appropriate.And only to communicate with other people. — Vera Mont
I had heard of the language problem. Do you have a reference that would tell me more about the symbols and patterns that they use?And they've developed a non-verbal set of symbols and patterns that work for them. — Vera Mont
If you check out my comments to Vera Mont, you'll see that if you want to communicate what the dog is doing to other humans, you may have to distort how the dog is actually thinking. It's an obscure feature of the intentionality of concepts of believe and know which most people miss because they don't think things through from the point of view of speaker and audience.Perhaps "rational" is being equated with "the way I think"? (If only subconsciously.) — wonderer1
Those question need a good deal of teasing out with specific cases before I would venture on anwers. But they are quite capable of mistrusting people.Perhaps another issue worth considering in this thread is, do animals think critically? Do humans think critically? What percent of humans? — wonderer1
There are some skills one can acquire from the culture. But real life experience is also a great teacher. Either way, I'm sure it is learned. Though children learn to pretend and even to deceive quite early.Is rationality the result of having culturally acquired skills that improve the reliability of one's thinking? — wonderer1
Yes. It depends whether by "critical thinking" you mean the skills in informal logic sometimes taught in schools. Many people never acquire those skills , but they're still capable of detecting falsehoods and deceptions.To think critically one first has to have abstract reasoning skills, which I don’t believe is possessed by animals, for the reasons stated. — Wayfarer
On my view, all thought based upon prior belief is rational thought. All action based upon one's own thought and belief is caused - in part at least - by rational thought.
— creativesoul
At least with respect to my experience, cutting through the clutter, has always been your philosophical modus operandi.
Gotta appreciate that bottom-up approach you instigated... — Mww
Well, either I'm not recognizing the distinction, or I'm not recognizing how fundamental it is. Perhaps if you were specific, it would be possible to discern which.That’s what I thought you would say, although I still say there’s a fundamental distinction you’re not recognising. — Wayfarer
Because some language less animals form, have, and/or hold rational thought, as learning how to open doors, gates, and tool invention/use clearly proves, if we accept/acknowledge and include evolutionary progression, it only follows that some rational thought existed in its entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices. Whatever language less rational thought consists of, it is most certainly content/elements/something that is amenable to brute evolutionary progression such that it is capable of resulting in our own very complex thought and belief.
In my book, as you know, it's correlations.
Hence, the a priori bottom up approach seems to be irrevocable to this subject matter. — creativesoul
In my book, as you know, it's correlations. Hence, the a priori bottom up approach seems to be irrevocable to this subject matter. — creativesoul
Well, either I'm not recognizing the distinction, or I'm not recognizing how fundamental it is. Perhaps if you were specific, it would be possible to discern which. — Ludwig V
So, they have some intuitive sense of time passing, as I mentioned earlier... perhaps accompanied by pattern recognition? I'm still not sure that that counts as knowing what time their humans are expected to arrive home.
— creativesoul
Dogs sure look expectant! You get clues off the standing up, prancing and sitting down every two minutes, tail wagging every time a car goes by and slobber all over the glass. — Vera Mont
The dog clearly connects the five o'clock train with the master's arrival... but hope?
— creativesoul
Why else would he keep going there every day for three years? The train had nothing for him. He never accepted treats from the staff or made friends with anyone on the platform. He just waited. — Vera Mont
What does "looking forward to going for a car ride on days the human doesn't drive away on" miss?
— creativesoul
I don't know. I suppose the fact that he didn't leave after breakfast. But why would they start getting excited at breakfast - which would take place later than on weekdays? Time sense, probably. — Vera Mont
I claimed, not Wayfarer, that looking forward to Thursday requires knowing how to use the word.
— creativesoul
Sure, the name of the day is needed to convey your anticipation to another human. But what you're actually anticipating is not the day, or its name, but the event. — Vera Mont
You could as easily say, "I look forward to seeing my father every week." They don't really need to know that he comes to dinner on Thursdays, it's just quicker and less self-revealing to say the day and not the event. — Vera Mont
Mww
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In my book, as you know, it's correlations. Hence, the a priori bottom up approach seems to be irrevocable to this subject matter.
— creativesoul
I agree, at last in principle. From Day One your correlations and my relations have busied themselves trying to meet in the middle. A priori has always been my centerpiece, so for me a priori relations are a cinch.
What, in your view, constitutes an a priori correlation?
Forgive me if I’m supposed to know this, if I’ve been informed already and let it slip away. — Mww
I think this distinction is resisted in contemporary culture because it's politically incorrect. There's an aversion to the Christian doctrine … It's today's 'popular wisdom'.
There's also the sense that we believe Darwinism has shown that we're on a continuum with other species, and this provides the satisfaction of us being part of nature...
This is where I think a philosophical critique of naturalism fits in, but I won't advance it again, as it's clearly not registering. — Wayfarer
Indeed. Can you point to species not only capable, but very often guilty of acting, speaking and thinking in ways that are anti-rational? I can.... So, "like me" is not a constant, perfect benchmark.Perhaps "rational" is being equated with "the way I think"? (If only subconsciously.) — wonderer1
Perhaps another issue worth considering in this thread is, do animals think critically? Do humans think critically? What percent of humans? — wonderer1
Here, you've veered into what we are doing with the word "rational". I'm more inclined to critically examining whether or not any single notion of "rational" is capable of admitting that language less animals are capable of learning how to open gates, open doors, make and use tools for specific purposes, etc.
— creativesoul
From another perspective, the question is what notion of "rational" enables us to explain the fact that some animals are capable of learning how to open gates, etc. I mean that the starting-point is that they can, and that stands in need of explanation. — Ludwig V
Here's how I look at it - for what it's worth.
We know how to explain how humans learn to do these things. But humans are our paradigm (reference point) of what a rational being is. So that's what we turn to. It involves a complex conceptual structure (think of it as a game - a rule-governed activity). The obvious recourse, then, is our existing practice in explaining how people do these things. We apply those concepts to the animals that learn to do these things. Our difficulty is that animals are in many ways different from human beings, most relevantly in the respect that many of the things that human beings can routinely do, they (apparently) cannot. So some modification of our paradigm is necessary. — Ludwig V
That's not a desperately difficult problem, but it is where the disagreements arise, though in the nature of the case, determinate answers will not be easy to arrive at. But we are already familiar with such situations, where we apply the concept of interpretation. The readiest way of explaining this is by reference to puzzle pictures, which can be seen (interpreted) in more than one way. There is no truth of the matter, just different ways of looking at the facts. So, competing (non-rational) interpretations cannot be conclusively ruled out. However, in this case, the same interpretations can be applied to human beings as well. They are found lacking because they do not recognize the kinds of relationship that we have with each other. The same lack is found with, for example, the application of mechanical (reductionist) accounts of animals. — Ludwig V
It has nothing to do with our word use. Language less animals have none.
— creativesoul
Well, it has and it hasn't. It hasn't because we are considering actions without language. But we are used to applying our concepts of action without language, since we happily explain what human beings to even when we do not have access to anything that they might say. (Foreign languages, for example) Indeed, sometimes we reject what the agent says about their own action in favour of the explanation we formulate for it. That is, agents can be deceptive or mistaken about their own actions.
The catch is that we have no recourse but to explain their actions in our language. But this is not a special difficulty. It applies whenever we explain someone else's action. — Ludwig V
I thinking pulling oneself from flames is not rational or deliberated or reasoned or thought about at all. It's just done.
— creativesoul
That doesn't mean it is not a rational response, does it? — Ludwig V
Believing that touching the fire caused pain is. Applied, that belief becomes operative in the sense that it stops one from doing it again.
— creativesoul
That is the animal's response - something that it does. Since it is rational and something the animal does and there for an example of animal rationality. — Ludwig V
What he's actually looking forward to is the particular event that usually takes place. Do we also know that no other animal can guage the interval at which a routine pleasant event usually occurs? To a small child, one would say: two more sleeps until Grandpa comes to dinner. For a dog who never gets to ride in the car when his human is going to work, and doesn't even ask, looks forward to weekends.
— Vera Mont
There's a complication here, that how the animal thinks about it may not be how we think about it. But, if we are to understand the animal, it needs to be expressed in terms that we can understand. To a small child, one would say "Two more sleeps...", but we would report to Grandpa that the child is really looking forward to him coming for dinner on Thursday.
In the case of the dog, we would have trouble saying to anyone on Wednesday that they are looking forward to the week-end. (How would that manifest itself? I'm not saying that there couldn't be any signs, only that I can't think of any). We might say they are looking forward to the week-end by extrapolation from the enthusiasm that we see on Saturday, but that would be risky in a philosophical context.
Still, when the signs appear, there is no doubt and we well might say the dog is excited because it's the week-end, while acknowledging that that does not reflect how the dog thinks about it. It could be "the day breakfast is late" - but even then, we don't suppose that's what the dog is saying to itself. Perhaps it is more like the response to the fire. I don't think there is a clear answer to this. — Ludwig V
Perhaps another issue worth considering in this thread is, do animals think critically? — wonderer1
Because some language less animals form, have, and/or hold rational thought, as learning how to open doors, gates, and tool invention/use clearly proves, if we accept/acknowledge and include evolutionary progression, it only follows that some rational thought existed in its entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices. Whatever language less rational thought consists of, it is most certainly content/elements/something that is amenable to brute evolutionary progression such that it is capable of resulting in our own very complex thought and belief.
In my book, as you know, it's correlations.
Hence, the a priori bottom up approach seems to be irrevocable to this subject matter.
— creativesoul
I think I mostly agree with you. — Ludwig V
Instinct and structure are all my dogs need to be so brilliant. — Fire Ologist
It doesn't reflect the human's accurately, either, but that doesn't matter, because a common language gives us a thumbnail picture of what is in the other's mind. We don't need every detail to understand the gist of their meaning.But one feels that the version for other people is not the truth, because it doesn't represent the dog's point of view accurately. — Ludwig V
Of course not. The feral children - and there have not been many - cannot communicate how they think, because they're inept in our language, even if they can learn it, and we have no access to theirs.I had heard of the language problem. Do you have a reference that would tell me more about the symbols and patterns that they use? — Ludwig V
Of that specific cluster of behaviours at that same time every weekday, but not on weekends or holidays? Show me three of that multitude of accurate explanations.Those behaviors have a multitude of very different and equally accurate explanations for why the dog is behaving that way. — creativesoul
And terrifying! Why? Similarity and commonality are not diseases; they're a natural result of sharing a planet and a history.Anthropomorphism looms large. — creativesoul
You're overcomplicating something simple. A biological clock: so much time has elapsed; at this interval, something is supposed to happen.A candidate not only has to have an intuitive sense of the passage of time, but it also must possess some means of differentiating between timeframes such that they also know that other periods are not that arrival time. They have to think along the lines of different timeframes. — creativesoul
And that's not rational, because....?The arrival of the train meant the arrival of the human, to the dog that is... due to the correlations the dog had drawn, time and time again between all the regularities surrounding the five o'clock train. — creativesoul
No. Because it's the first day of a new work-week. Early rising (possibly with hangover) (possibly lover departing), rigid morning routine, uncomfortable clothing, commute, staff meeting, unpleasant colleague regaling you with their spectacular weekend adventures, bossy department head dumping unwanted task on your desk.... Some people who enjoy their work actually look forward to Mondays; most people don't enjoy their work. Pity!Sometimes. Lots of folk dread Monday, simply because it's Monday. — creativesoul
No other train, just the five o'clock local.To the dog, the train means the human. — creativesoul
I don't know what you have in mind with "structure", and whether it is relevant to the following, but I don't think it reasonable to see what is shown below as merely a matter of instinct. — wonderer1
And very interesting to me. Do you have more to share about animals and laughing? That surely involves a degree of thinking. But what is thinking without words? — Athena
The young female gorilla watched another older male attempt to collect ants from a hole in the ground, only to see the ants bite his arm, scaring him away. The female gorilla tried to put her own arm in the hole, and she too was bitten. But instead of giving up, the young ape then had her very own ‘eureka’ moment. She looked around for a suitable implement, and selected a piece of wood approximately 20 cm long, tapering from 2 cm wide at one end to 1 cm long at the other. She then inserted the stick into the hole, withdrew it, and licked off ants clambering over it, avoiding being stung. — http://www.virunganews.com/wild-gorilla-creates-a-food-tool-in-eureka-moment/
My first dog, whom I greatly loved (just like the other two) and who did have an Alpha personality (a Bouvier des Flandres weighing 120 pounds healthily) knew how to (try to) deceive us. I'd say "come" at a distance after he'd misbehaved and he'd sit his ass on the ground and calmly stare in all directions except toward me, as though he was not hearing what I was saying. — javra
I'd say "come" at a distance after he'd misbehaved and he'd sit his ass on the ground and calmly stare in all directions except toward me — javra
anima-endowed beings — javra
That's true. What I'm after is that truth is not the only criterion in play. There's also the desire to understand and to be understood. That may require slightly different ways of putting things to cater for differences in perspective. We only need enough accuracy for our actual purposes. Accurate for all purposes is not available. We can always refine things if and when the occasion arises. Philosophers are trained to ignore all that, and trip themselves up quite often.It doesn't reflect the human's accurately, either, but that doesn't matter, because a common language gives us a thumbnail picture of what is in the other's mind. We don't need every detail to understand the gist of their meaning. — Vera Mont
Yes. I did wonder how it was possible, and lived in a wild hope.Of course not. The feral children - and there have not been many - cannot communicate how they think, because they're inept in our language, even if they can learn it, and we have no access to theirs. — Vera Mont
On the one hand, anthropomorphism, on the other mechanism. No escape. Steer a careful course between the two, and be prepared to change direction as necessary.Anthropomorphism looms large. — creativesoul
Yes, it is more nuanced a matter than I allowed. Interpretation is not a free for all. It has limits.I disagree that there is no truth to the matter of interpretation. Interpretation presupposes meaning. ... On my view, puzzle pictures are meaningless in and of themselves. — creativesoul
Very neat. But I would have thought that a pedant might refuse to recognize a distinction on pedantic grounds? In any case, I'm only a pedant when I want to be - I don't claim to be any different from other pedants in that respect.Yes, animals can act intelligently, especially higher animals like cetaceans, primates, birds, canines, etc. But they lack reason in the human sense (which, as you say above that you're 'a pedant' might be, I would have thought, a distinction a pedant would recognise ;-) ) — Wayfarer
Yes, and like all popular wisdom, tends to be a bit broad-brush.As noted, I think this distinction is resisted in contemporary culture because it's politically incorrect. There's an aversion to the Christian doctrine of mankind's sovereignty over nature as it is associated with religion and old-fashioned cultural attitudes. It's today's 'popular wisdom'. — Wayfarer
Yes. I sense a criticism there, but I don't quite see what it is. There is a further difficulty that I'm not clear just what philosophical naturalism is.There's also the sense that we believe Darwinism has shown that we're on a continuum with other species, and this provides the satisfaction of us being part of nature, which is consistent with philosophical naturalism. — Wayfarer
Well, if you could favour me with a link to where you have advanced your critique, I could look at it more carefully.This is where I think a philosophical critique of naturalism fits in, but I won't advance it again, as it's clearly not registering. — Wayfarer
Yes. It's not restricted to this issue. People (including me, sometimes) get over-focused and can't see what they don't want to see.But, to be honest, I get bored in repeatedly presenting the same facts regarding lesser animal's observed behaviors -- to only find these same factual presentations repeatedly overlooked for the sake of the given counter argument. — javra
But since you grant intelligence to "higher" animals, I take you to be granting rationality in some sense to them, but then maintaining there is a different sense that is available to human beings. I don't have a clear grasp of these two different senses, much less of why the difference is important. It may be merely pedantic. — Ludwig V
I'm not clear just what philosophical naturalism is. — Ludwig V
The idea that we are "just monkeys" was a major issue at the time. But I gather than many Christians are now at peace with evolution, so they must have found some resolution of the issue. For myself, I notice that we did still carry many of the basic animal behaviour patterns and that we find predecessor or proto- versions of many of our patterns of behaviour in animals (and even insects). So the idea of a radical discontinuity seems a bit implausible. — Ludwig V
:up: Fascinating! This seems to confirm what I have always believed: that dogs are capable of deductive inferences, rational thought. — Janus
Thomas Nagel has an interesting essay I often refer to, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. I've mentioned it a few times on the forum, it's generaly not well received, but I find it very insightful. (Nagel is not pushing a religious barrow, he's an avowed atheist but one with the chutzpah to call scientific materialism into question.) — Wayfarer
I'm never sure how much weight to put on explanations at this level. Bu there is another issue, not yet mentioned, playing in to this. I think it may be hard for philosophers in the traditions of english-speaking philosophy to accept as philosophical at all - but then, neither Christianity nor Darwin is a philosophical theory. This has its roots in European philosophy and is often deployed in sociology. My suggestion is that there is a tendency to see animals as inherently other than us, human beings, mainly on the ground that they are in what one might call the state of nature, before humans came and developed societies. It's a way of thinking that was prominent in 18th century philosophy, but the roots of it in our way of life are deeper than that. The difference is that they are now openly contested.As noted, I think this distinction is resisted in contemporary culture because it's politically incorrect. There's an aversion to the Christian doctrine of mankind's sovereignty over nature as it is associated with religion and old-fashioned cultural attitudes. It's today's 'popular wisdom'.
— Wayfarer
There's also the sense that we believe Darwinism has shown that we're on a continuum with other species, and this provides the satisfaction of us being part of nature, which is consistent with philosophical naturalism.
— Wayfarer — Ludwig V
Thanks for the information and the link. I've secured everything but will need some time to read and think about it.Nagel is not pushing a religious barrow, he's an avowed atheist but one with the chutzpah to call scientific materialism into question. — Wayfarer
I don't know how much science Nagel knows, but do you really mean to say that any perspective is not scientifically well-informed is not worth having? That's a very big assumption.Thomas Nagel is a scientific ignoramus, and doesn't have a perspective based on having a scientifically well informed perspective. Your attempts to smear scientifically informed people with Nagel's emotional issues amount to pushing propaganda on your part. — wonderer1
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