RoR: Forum

Ed,

I think some of the more primitive animals meet the description you provided of "hard-wired," but I'd say that many animals have a learning process that goes on to acquire emotions. I once had a parrot that was clearly so hard wired about some things, that it wasn't open to unlearning. Other things the parrot could modify with learning.

For example, a puppy starts with no fear of a rolled up newspaper, but can learn to be afraid of it, if the owner used it spank the puppy for misbehaving. I'm not talking about conceptualization, because it can be a simple association, - see owner pick up a rolled up newspaper, be afraid. I think that the underlying machinery for reacting to the fear is similar, or even identical to more primitive animals - that sympathetic nervous system, the electrochemical changes for the fight or flight physiological reaction. But the process for setting up a set of mental entities that will, if the animal perceives a triggering entity, results in the use of that machinery would involve some learning going on in the consciousness that results in creating an entity in the subconsciousness.

Post 61

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 3:48pm

It sounds like you guys are describing that animals have a rudimentary "sense of life" as described in "The romantic manifesto". That would account for animals cognitive and conceptual limitations but their ability to get a "feel" for what they like and don't. Is that accurate?

Post 62

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 4:21pm

Ryan,

Answering you may provide a better answer to others (e.g., Steve) than directly answering the others.

I'm talking about a rudimentary "sense of life" that is natural to an animal. It's natural for a startled animal to get scared and flee. There may, at one time, have been some gazelles that stared at cheetahs approaching them at 70mph and said to themselves -- in gazelle-speak / gazelle-talk:

********************
Man, oh man. Would you look at those spotted things running right at us!

Why, if those suckers don't slow down then they are going to bowl right over us. I think that we'd better step over here 10-12' or so -- so that those wacky, spotted things don't run right into us. But one thing that we don't need to do is to get afraid and actually run from them -- because that won't really affect our survival or anything like that. These spotted things are just going to run right by us, as long as we move over a little and just give them some room to show off how fast they can run.
********************

... but those gazelles never survived enough to reproduce in any great number. In fact, all gazelles that didn't have a hard-wired, instinctual fear of lurching cheetahs went extinct. Now, all we have are these gazelles that are hard-wired to get scared and run like banshees, whenever any spotted thing with sharp teeth is running toward them.

And that same emotion which all contemporary gazelles get -- due to instinctual hard-wiring -- is the correct emotion for that situation.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 2/19, 4:39pm)

Post 63

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 5:17pm

Ye read the Animals In Translation book yet, Ed?

Post 64

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 5:31pm

Rev',

I didn't yet, but I did try (once) to get the thing from the bookstore (they were out).

Ed

Post 65

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 5:40pm

Steve,

The example with the puppy and the rolled-up newspaper doesn't get at what I mean. I get why it is that puppies don't mind rolled-up newspapers, unless they've been swatted with one. I get that that doesn't mean that puppies have formed a concept of "swatting thing" such that the puppies would also fear tennis rackets or guitars or anything which has extension. Instead, they will associate newspapers with swatting, based on perception.

It may help to say that I'm thinking of four levels of causation. Not Aristotle's four causes, though. The levels on my mind are:

(1) raw physics -- as when a rock falls, or when it sinks in water it fell into
(2) physical feedback mechanisms -- as when a plant's roots re-orient themselves downward
(3) emotions -- as when a gazelle takes off frantically upon the sight of an approaching cheetah
(4) abstractions -- as when a human performs the dangerous work of a vigilante (because of his or her sense of justice)

Ed

Post 66

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 6:40pm

Ed, I don't equate instinct with "sense of life" in the manner you do. Instinct is basically inborn. "sense of life" is automatized through living. Going with the puppy example, I would call that sense of life. It had no instinct regarding the offending object, it connected it with pain, which it did have an instinct to avoid. Its response is visceral. The same thing happens with a person that learned as a child that public speaking is a painful and humiliating experience. Its more complex because a human is more complex, but the general process is the same. The child (and later adult) doesn't have an instinct to avoid it, that it is a danger has become part of his sense of life. I believe that sense of life is also why you can take a dog and make it a vicious killer or a wonderful pet depending on how its treated.
I would say that your gazelle example is good for instinct development though (minus all the gazelle cognition). The same holds true for people as well. Thats why a lot of people recoil in terror at a nonpoisonous garden snake, but think nothing of getting into a plastic and metal cage and accelerating to speeds where certain death or crippling injury are certain if a crash occurs. Biology simply hasn't prepared us to instinctively feel that danger.

Post 67

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 9:22pm

Ryan,

My sense of emotions here -- like the emotions of a fleeing gazelle -- is as if they were ultimately-conscious, nonphysical feedback mechanisms. This differentiates them from the nonconscious, physical feedback mechanisms of gravitropic roots. I'm assuming here that plants are not conscious -- even though they respond to cues in the environment.

A basic definition of an organism's "sense of life" is an emotional appraisal of existence and of the organism itself (within or inside of that appraised existence). On this view, the hard-wired, "survival" emotions of animals can be seen as a natural, rudimentary "sense of life."

For instance, there is little for a great white shark or a killer whale to fear. They have no natural predators. The great white shark or the killer whale will harbor a certain slant on things. Basically, it will swim around the ocean with a certain sense of entitlement and with little or no neurotic tendencies. Grizzly, Kodiak, and Polar bears will have a similar natural, rudimentary "sense of life."

Keep in mind that I'm attempting to sum up and to delineate all of the causes of all of the behaviors of all of the things in the known universe. For this project of mine, I am trying to find clear demarcations of types of causation for types of things.

I believe that sense of life is also why you can take a dog and make it a vicious killer or a wonderful pet depending on how its treated.

You have a point about dogs becoming monsters while fighting them (to paraphrase a warning quote for humans to be careful which battles they fight, lest they, in the process, change), but it is not compelling to me. For instance, haven't you seen vicious, killer dogs wagging their tails and acting excitingly friendly (until the "kill" command is spoken by their master)? What's going on there?

I have an answer. For the dog (at least for the killer dogs that are also friendly), there isn't this learned viciousness that pervades its everyday behavior -- because the dog isn't conscious on that level of things. That dog never thinks -- nor has any reason to think (even implicitly or tacitly):

"Gee, this behavior is vicious and may affect my sense of life or my overall ability to enjoy myself. I wonder if I shouldn't tone it down a little and be more of a Lassie-type. Lassie seems like such a happy dog. I would like to copy Lassie's emotional appraisal of existence, rather than to incorporate all of this nasty viciousness into my being."

There was one story of a guy who used an attack dog (the family pet) to viciously attack and to kill his own wife. The police could not ascertain that this dog was used to commit the vicious and bloody and heinous crime -- because the dog was so playful and friendly ... until they found the "kill" command, that is. The moment the cops found the word and said it out loud, the dog attacked viciously.

One minute friendly, the next minute savage.

One explanation is that dogs are able to be psychotic or to have multiple personalities (or even tacitly multiple personalities) -- able to be warm and friendly and joyous ... and vicious and merciless and blood-thirsty. The better explanation is that dogs don't perform (even tacitly) the mental abstractions required in order to label their behavior as friendly or viciously merciless.

Each case -- of playing or killing -- is essentially meaningless to them. They can tap into natural inclinations to play. They can tap into natural inclinations to kill. And having killed someone or something doesn't psychologically damage a dog or a dog's sense of life (as it would do to a human who has killed).

In a sense, a dog is like an existentialist philosopher, not understanding the very fact that he has a "nature." Able to give gifts one day and to murder the next, depending on the inside influences of moods or the outside influences of rote-memorized commands or other stimuli to respond to.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 2/19, 9:41pm)

Post 68

Saturday, February 21, 2009 - 5:06am

My, how topics can wander. This all started with my article Scope of Volition. While I wrote a bit about animal volition in the last section, it was mainly about human volition. The main topic has now wandered to animal emotions, while touching on animal "thought." The quotes indicate it is quite different from human thought, but I will skip them henceforth.

In post 48 Stephen wrote:

The living thing behaves in response to certain circumstances.

In post 67 Ed wrote:

In a sense, a dog is like an existentialist philosopher, not understanding the very fact that he has a "nature." Able to give gifts one day and to murder the next, depending on the inside influences of moods or the outside influences of rote-memorized commands or other stimuli to respond to.

These echo comments Brand Blanshard made about the animal mind in his book The Nature of Thought, pages 251-7.

The animal mind is anchored to sensation and dependent upon the chance offerings of the moment. When not stimulated to thinking from an external source, it does not seem to think at all. If a cat sees a mouse wander into its field of vision, it can interpret it as prey and take action. If the cat is hungry, it will go in search of food. But unless prompted in one of these ways, it can think of nothing to do and goes to sleep. Aristotle thought human minds have a little in common with animal minds, but what is really distictive about the human mind is its emancipation into a different kind of activity, not bound to present perception.

Animal thought cannot be abstract. An animal can focus on one aspect of what is in its presence, such as a dog attending to a particular odor. But this doesn't reach the level of analysis and abstraction humans are capable of.

No other animals have anything approaching language. They have exclamations, imperatives and entreaties. They have no sounds for nouns, names for trees and colors and such. (Ignore the few human-trained exceptions and assume Blanshard meant their natural state.) This is because the animal cannot abstract -- the thought of a tree is to grasp a class concept. A human mind can isolate a tree with the "mind's eye" as well as the eye of sense.

Perceptual thought is relatively helpless in dealing with the novel. An animal's memory enables it to deal with the very familiar. (He didn't say recall is only triggered by sensation, but it seems consistent with the rest.) With the novel it is trial and error. It deals with wholes and cannot break the situation into parts, eliminating those that are irrelevant and confine itself to the rest.

But at the top of the animal scale, perceptual thought is on the verge of a "new flight", what Blanshard calls the "free idea" -- what we think of explicitly that is not present in sense. The animal lives in a world of perception. It's thought on the whole is sense-bound; it expressly recalls no past and expressly anticipates no future.

That ends my report on Blanshard. Note that in the final section of my essay, my example of when a lion might be choosing is a perceptual situation. "It seems to be perceptual focus rather than some rudimentary kind of conceptual focus."

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 2/21, 8:00am)

Post 69

Monday, February 23, 2009 - 6:24pm

I am reading a book titled Aristotle: Power of Perception now, by Deborah K. W. Modrak (hat tip to John Enright). Aristotle's position per Modrak is similar to that of Blanshard paraphrased in the previous post. However, Aristotle's account is far more integrated (p. 33-4).

Representation is the depiction of objects or states involved in perception, memory, dreams, and thoughts. Sensory representation is such depiction via use of sensible characteristics like colors, sounds, etc. Sensible characteristics are properties that physical objects possess in relation to percipient beings. They are preserved as the objects of phantasia. Apprehension of complexes of sensible characteristics can function as internal representation is evident in Aristotle's account of animal movement. However, only humans have the intellectual faculty of the soul. Aristotle invokes phantasia to explain complex animal behavior, e.g. movement and care of their young, even suggesting phantasia is a kind of rudimentary thinking. The rational faculty is dependent upon phantasmata and primarily employs a language-like vehicle.

However, animals cannot abstract and reason discursively. Aristotle even argues that phantasia is not a form of belief (doxa) because belief carries conviction (pistis) but phantasia does not. Conviction requires the use of logic and conceptual representation. Such logical and conceptual complexity exceeds the representational capacity of an animal limited to sensory representation.

The thoughts in this paragraph are my own, not Modrak's. Aristotle seems to say that nonhuman animals lack the ability to question their thoughts or to affirm truth or falsity. This seems right, since true or false is usually thought to pertain to propositions, requiring language. Nonhuman animals behave as if their mental contents are always true. Memories are not "exact copies" and earlier memories may be "written over" by later ones. Humans have the capacity to compare and judge the veracity of memory, but animals do not.

Returning to Modrak's commentary on Aristotle, she later compares Aristotle's position to his predecessors' (p. 44). Per Aristotle most of his predecessors thought the soul moved the body by itself being in motion. He regarded that as erroneous, since it ignored the cognitive and affective states such as beliefs and desires that seem central to motivating actions. "[A]nd more generally the soul does not seem to move the animal in this way but through choice [prohairsis] and thought [noesis]" (De Anima I, 3, 40b24-25).

I don't know which translation she used for this. The translation I have differs slightly. "And, in general, we may object that it is not in this way that the soul appears to originate movement in animals -- it is through intention or process of thinking." While this translation uses 'intention' instead of 'choice', the other one suggests animals can choose its motions. My article claimed that humans made choices about their bodily actions. I wasn't explicit about animals having the same capacity. However, I tie bodily motion to 'will' more than 'choice', 'will' being an implementation of 'choice', 'choice' being mental. Volition consists of both.

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 2/24, 4:49am)

Post 70

Wednesday, June 16 - 4:58am