[S]tudying dog play is so important, [cognitive ethologist Marc] Bekoff says.... It could ultimately shed light on the evolution of human emotions and how we came to build a civilization based on laws and cooperation, empathy and altruism.Well, in one sense, when we study anything, we study ourselves. When we gaze into crystal balls and tea leaves, we see ourselves. Anything that focuses and facilitates human reflection is likely to cause a human being to see human beings.
Play may seem a frivolous activity, but because it is not simply a survival reflex, it provides the best opportunity to explore who the animal really is, to peer perhaps into her soul. “When we study play in dogs,” Bekoff says, “we study ourselves.”
Human beings are very self-centered and self-absorbed, and for us, it always comes back to us. Dogs, on the other hand, are dogs. We do love to project ourselves onto dogs, and we see ourselves in them, especially those of us who enjoy ourselves and find personal satisfaction in spending time with dogs.
Plenty of us avoid dogs and spend our time looking at something else — cats, maybe, or clouds — and in what we look at we see ourselves. Whenever we are drawn to look at something for a long time, it's inherent in the activity that we will get the idea that we are really seeing something about us, the human beings.
But to do science, we must overcome this inclination. I suspect that the belief that dogs are like people is one of the great delusions to which human beings fall prey.
Dog morality? You wish.
ADDED: Unbeknownst to me, Meade was simultaneously blogging the same article and pulled the same quote: "When we study play in dogs, we study ourselves."
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44 comments:
Your best post yet!
here's a link you or meade may be interested in concerning the treatment of dogs in Pakistan.
http://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2014/05/shaking-hand-memory-of-pakistan.html
You need Vicki Hearne's _Adams Task_.
Read the essay chapters on Washoe and How To Say Fetch.
Dog morality is like insect politics.
Psych 101 is what hectors students into disbelieving their eyes.
Soon they are animal morons.
I've always said I wish I was half as good a man as my dog thinks I am...
Vicki Hearne's _Animal Happiness_ will tell you about the morality of various animals, one from the Bible.
A nice illustration of how a woman can write when she's got her act together, too.
Then, probably from _Bandit_, the case of the wolf. Your pet wolf may love you, but he can't be trusted to distinguish your friends from your enemies. He's wild, which means doesn't make sense of human things.
A dog does. He's domesticated.
A dog's sense of who he is is shaped by training. I am not the kind of dog who breaks a sit-stay because of a mere squirrel. He senses a responsibility and shapes himself with it.
None of this disputes at WaPo's story is junk.
From the article: Interestingly, dogs even outsmart chimpanzees on some theory-of-mind tests. When a researcher points at one of two cups, for example, dogs almost always run to the cup that is pointed to, a sign that they have intuited what the scientist was thinking — i.e., that the researcher was trying to show the dog something. Chimps, by contrast, have no idea what we mean when we point at something.
Let's not forget that "we" are the primates.
In Mad Libs style, replace the word "chimpanzees" with "children".
Training, at least with Koehler, is showing the opportunist dog a responsiblity he finds more attractive, more satisfying, than what he was.
It shapes who he thinks he is.
The psych department will think it's just operant conditioning. But Koehler doesn't work with cats. Dogs are special.
"I've always said I wish I was half as good a man as my dog thinks I am…"
More accurate: I wish I was half as good a man as my dog makes me think he thinks I am.
Mr. David Grimm should be writing at 538.com.
From the article: Interestingly, dogs even outsmart chimpanzees on some theory-of-mind tests. When a researcher points at one of two cups, for example, dogs almost always run to the cup that is pointed to, a sign that they have intuited what the scientist was thinking — i.e., that the researcher was trying to show the dog something. Chimps, by contrast, have no idea what we mean when we point at something.
Moral of the story: Do not use a chimpanzee for duck hunting.
It's all about evolution and its genetic mechanisms. The study is ultimately about figuring out the connections between genes and behavior in humans and other animals. Remember, we're (probably) all related to every other living organism on the planet and every fossil. Don't you think it interesting that dogs seem closer to humans in this trait than chimps?
"Dog morality? You wish."
It's not completely far-fetched. The first dogs may not have had morality as we might have recognized it, but after thousands of years of selective breeding, and adapting to human families (if not necessarily broader human societies)?
Maybe someday dogs will pass scientists' "moral Turing test."
As Cesar Millan is fond of saying, dogs tend to "live in the moment". They aren't concerned about the future or past, they just react to what's going on around them. Dogs (like wolves) organize themselves hierarchically with an alpha pack leader at the top and an omega at the bottom. We humans tend to occupy the alpha role in human dog relationships when things are going well. I'm not sure of there's a kind of morality in such a system or not.
So much wrong thinking stems from the refusal to believe that man is a living soul and a whole other being than animals.
"More accurate: I wish I was half as good a man as my dog makes me think he thinks I am.
Dachshund morality.
Dog morality? I imagine that means the author doesn't really understand morality. It's not a system of behaviors for getting along in society. It's a matter of what is, and what isn't, sin.
Is a dog capable of sinning? Of course not.
http://janetheactuary.blogspot.com/2014/03/adam-eve-and-human-exceptionalism.html
Of course, it could be that the author rejects the idea of sin altogether, and believes, for instance, that murder isn't a fundamentally wrong act, but just that it causes human society to "malfunction."
"Whenever we are drawn to look at something for a long time, it's inherent in the activity that we will get the idea that we are really seeing something about us, the human beings. "
I don't think this is even remotely true. When I do my astronomy, or when I do my geology, or when I go out into nature, I am not seeking, nor do I receive, insight into myself or the human race.
As I have been "educated" by commenters here, there can be no morality without God. Ergo, if there is dog morality, there must be a doggy God.
I disagree with your disagreement somewhat. Making analogies between dog (or cat or rat, etc.) behaviors and human ones assumes that there are similarities at a very primitive level in the ways that sentient beings manage their social relationships. We humans like to think that all of our behaviors were arrived at by some intellectual process when in fact our behaviors have been shaped by numerous factors, including basic biological ones. Studying creatures with far less cultural baggage than ourselves -- thus stripping away much of the overlying complexities -- helps us to perhaps identify the much simpler factors from whence come some of our common traits. You don't get that from clouds.
It can be carried too far, of course, in the case of anthropomorphizing critter behavior -- your cat doesn't "hate" you, he's just responding in ways that make some sense to him/her -- or relegating much of human behavior to primitive instincts.
Hey, dogs have their morality, and we've got ours.
I take your point though. Dogs got their own thing going and aren't four-legged people. On the other hand I don't doubt they have feelings and form attachments to people and other dogs (other animals in some cases) that go beyond mere pragmatic exchanges (feed me, shelter me, and I'll act like you matter to me). Or at least no more so than humans do!
Hey, wait a second, we do overlap.
First, correlation is not equivalent to dependence. Second, while induction or inference may guide scientific inquiry, it is not itself a legitimate scientific method. The separation of natural and speculative philosophies is threatened by personal and group dogmas.
That said, these people are really desperate to uphold the doctrine of evolutionary creation, while simultaneously straining to reject evolutionary principles.
Finally, the differences between humans and animals is axiomatic, which is established through a subjective perception of physical differences, and objective observation of conscious expression measured in degrees of freedom.
"As I have been 'educated' by commenters here, there can be no morality without God. Ergo, if there is dog morality, there must be a doggy God."
There may not be a Doggy God, but there is The Alpha. And that may be sufficient for dog morality.
Well, we have bred dogs for thousands of years to be more compatible with humans. It shouldn't be surprising that dogs behave in a way that we find relatable. We made them that way.
I wonder if this is evidence of too many researchers getting too many grant dollars.
Diplomad is one of the blogs I read every day. The dog story is horrifying but the story of the Muslim policeman killing the dog in Idaho is worse. I could not get to sleep after seeing that. I hope he was fired but I'm sure he wasn't.
Islamophobia.
I recently saw a program, I think NOVA, about animal intelligence. Birds in the family Corvidae, such as crows, could solve certain types of puzzle problems that dogs could not. It implied that dogs have no idea how to get the treat.
I thought that was silly, because my dog would just get me to do it for him. He basically has out-sources that task.
Dogs descend from wolves. Samples of wolf "morality."
Dominate or kill the weaker wolves.
Protect the pups for a while and then dominate or kill them.
Distrust strangers, even your own kind.
Trust your instincts. It's all you have.
No mercy in the hunt.
The strong feed first and most.
Leave the wounded behind.
Have sex at your peril except with the boss.
Wolves are the only species. All others are food or enemies.
Suck up to the boss.
Our pack before all others. Attack the others when you are strong, retreat when you are weak.
Good looks count.
Size matters.
Dogs understand all this, but they are really, really good at "suck up to the boss."
Which is why we love them.
Plus the funny and beautiful part.
Humans are such easy marks.
David, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Universitatus Committeeatum e plurbis unum, I hereby confer upon you the honorary degree of Dh.D.
Dr. of Dogology!
As others have mentioned, dogs did not evolve in a vacuum. Humans have been applying eugenics towards dogs for thousands of years to make their behavior conform to what we find useful.
In addition, dogs whose behavior poses safety issues are not likely to be used in such studies.
Vicious and timid dogs are likely to be excluded as "not suitable." (Timid dogs are more likely to bite, or at least nip, in situations they find stressful.)
But to do science, we must overcome this inclination. I suspect that the belief that dogs are like people is one of the great delusions to which human beings fall prey.
There's no reason to believe dogs differ more from us emotionally than they do anatomically or physiologically--i.e. close enough for many scientific/medical research purposes. Of course, their morality has not evolved to the level of sophistication that ours has, so we can't expect them to exhibit such characteristically human behaviors as war and genocide.
You know, if you look at a dog closely when he stares out the window, you can clearly see that he is either puzzling through the Nicomachean Ethics, or working up a refutation to Also, Sprach Zarathustra. This proves dogs are sentient, moral beings, and deserving of full legal rights, if not tenure at one of our finer universities.
Anthropomorphizing is fun, isn't it? Hey, look at my cat! When he tips his head, you can tell he's pondering the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle...
"Anthropomorphizing is fun, isn't it? Hey, look at my cat! When he tips his head, you can tell he's pondering the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle..."
Well, once you look at him, sure.
"so we can't expect them to exhibit such characteristically human behaviors as war and genocide."
Dogs don't have the attention span required. However, chimpanzees do, and they have wars and attempt genocide on neighboring bands. So the "characteristically human" part fails.
One problem is that scientists, and science types, don't consider that the dog is observing them too.
Where is the bit in Adams Task...
"Now in the case of my dog, can anything like a ranking of rational desires be achieved? ... When I put food before him, my dog eats it ; when I throw the stick, he fetches it. Both he does unfailingly, unless he is distracted by some stronger impulse, such as, on occasion, sex ; and in response to the question whether my dog desires or prefers eating to chasing sticks, I can only say he does both when the situations are to hand and no other impulse interferes. Several times, I have tried putting food before him and throwing a stick at the same time ; each time he has sought neither the food nor the stuck but stood looking at me."
Professor R. G. Frey, cited by Vicki Hearne
It's not hard to be as clueless as Frey in various ways.
"I recently saw a program, I think NOVA, about animal intelligence."
I love NOVA.
Thank you David Koch!!!
I think Jane Goodall's lifelong study of the Bonobo chimpanzees provide a much better elemental model of our psyches and social interactions.
Do dogs practice virtues? Well, they demonstrate at least two: courage and loyalty.
Dog morality? You wish.
No, I observe it.
Pakistan.
They suck.
From the article: Interestingly, dogs even outsmart chimpanzees on some theory-of-mind tests.
But wolves don't outsmart chimps.
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington in "Space, Time and Gravitation" (1920:
"We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own."
You read it here first: Dog is God spelled backwards. A dog is lovable but has only an imprecise knowledge of our ways. The dog likes to believe that our ways, however mystifying, are ultimately benign and that it pays to be obedient to us. This mirrors our relationship to God and by treating our dogs well, we are reaffirming our faith in a benign God. People who mistreat dogs live in a world that God has abandoned.......Hitler was a great dog lover. I'm finding him hard to fit into my theory.
Imagine how much worse Hitler would have been if he hadn't spent time playing with his dog.
When we study play in dogs,” Bekoff says, “we study ourselves.”
Exactly. Dogs and humans are both descended from ancestors who hunted in packs. Dogs bond with humans and vice versa because, on a race-memory level, one's ways and instincts are familiar to the other.
That's why cat people are so weird.
I haven't been following closely enough. I know that, unlike most people, Althouse hates to travel (at least by plane which she is apparently afraid of). Does she not like dogs also?
Dogs are so prevalent in human society because thousands of years of selective breeding have created dogs that display emotional attachments to human beings in a way that human beings find endearing.
As another writer put it, dogs and humans get along because dogs act like furry little children (which humans love) and humans act like big hairless pack leaders (which dogs love).
I suppose Althouse could assert that "dogs don't *really* love you" -- but hell, people who claim they love you frequently don't mean it and unlike dogs don't even act like it. I think I'll take a behavioral display that looks and feels like love (and therefore *is* love) over some bullshit human proclamation of devotion that isn't backed by anything tangible.
What, at the end of the day, is love? Well... You know it when you see it. And my dog loves me and I love her.
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