sullster

I know that there is huge controversy about human consciousness. What is it, how is it and where is it. But, animals such as my dog, are usually left out of the the consciousness debate. Yet, I feel there is something there looking at me which knows it is there and is conscious.

Well let me get to my quetion for the scientists here. Is consciousness only a human ability and thus being defined as such, is it not an ability shared by my dog? If my dog has consciousness, is it a consciousness of a different kind or of a degree from the human version?

excreationist

Well I think it takes years for humans to learn to develop full consciousness.
These are the stages that humans seem to go through:
<a href="http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html" target="_blank">Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development</a>:
I don't know how far dogs could get in these stages - but most wouldn't pass stage 1.

Corwin

The latter.

Most animals feel pain, 'higher' animals display higher intellectual and emotional behaviors such as dreaming and self awareness. (Not all animals. Show a mirror to a scorpion and it will attack it. Show a mirror to a chimp and the chimp realizes that it's showing an image of itself.)

It's a matter of degree really. Do animals think? Clearly yes. (Most of them anyway.) Do animals think like humans do? Definitely not. Do they think on the same level? With some, arguably close. Higher primates (apes specifically) and some of the higher cetaceans, (whales and dolphins, probably not seals and sea lions) come very close...

Will your dog understand Shakespeare? Nope. Does he think? Well... in his own way, yes.

Marduk

It's simply a matter of degree, the closer you get to humans the more developed the conscious or self awareness. I've seen alot of this type study done on the NOVA series (hosted by Alan Alda)
Chimps, raised by humans, when asked to file photo's by species will place other chimps photos in the ape pile, but their own picture they will file in the human pile, they also recognize themselves in the mirror, and will masturbate to pictures of humans whereas wild chimps pay no attention to naked naked apes.
Some dogs will recognize themselves in the mirror but most don't, they think it's another dog.
When I first played a video of my dog on TV he ran right to the room where the video was shot to find the dog running around 'his' house. He would look at himself in the mirror but when he didn't get a smell feedback he stoped paying attention.
I wonder (as did Carl Sagan) if it has to do with brain size (neo cortex) in relation to body size, what do whales & dolphins think about with their huge brains?

Corwin

We don't know what whales and dolphins think about really.... if anything.

Logically.... well a blue whale's brain masses as much as some people's bodies... it's pretty huge.

Is there much there? Dunno. The first computers were enormous, but how much could they do compared to a watch sized calculator of today?

Part of the problem is that we really don't have a working, functional definition of intelligence to begin with. Not a good one anyway. (This is part of the difficulty with creating artificial intelligence as well... how do you duplicate something if you can't define it? We're managing, but only partially.)

Amen-Moses

The basic answer is yes but the problem we humans have is that our conciousness is limited to visual stimulus (i.e we think in and react most strongly to visual cues), whereas our best friends live in a world governed mainly by odours. The mirror test does not work on dogs very well because the primary odour clues are absent and their absence overrides the visual, i.e whenever I have tried this with dogs they either completely ignore the mirror (or video tape) or become very confused when tryng to work out what it is you want from them.

Dogs never get confused by scent however, try getting the scent of themselves or another dog and you will find the reaction to be instantaneous recognition.

Cats make much better test subjects because like humans they are visually oriented and I've not found one who is phased by the mirror or video test, i.e they recognise themselves pretty quickly and one of my cats even used a mirror as an aid to preening (they are after all pretty vain creatures).

As to Dolphns and Whales, they live in a world dominated by sound so who knows what sort of test would be required there!

Interestingly there was a study done on Rat dreaming which was then copied using university students with parallel results, but that wasn't too surprising to me at least.

Amen-Moses

three4jump

Whether or not it is a sign of consciousness or not, my dog does have the use of language. Words he understands:
Sit
Stay
Speak
Shake
Come
No
Off
Porter (his name)
Jump

"Words" he can say to me that I will understand reliably:
Grumbling/purring sound (he's happy)
Various barks for danger, surprise, territory.
The Sigh. (This sigh is really a work of art. It perfectly expresses his boredom and impatience better than if he could say, in English, "I'm bored and impatient.")
Laughing (similar to panting but with a distinct difference)

He also can communicate very clearly with body language and facial expressions. He is a master of manipulation to get people to do what he wants.

I wouldn't go so far as to say he thinks logically, although he can be very intelligent and demonstrate foresight with his actions. He can't form sentences with his language, but he can communicate complex thoughts with nuances and variations. He has a sense of humor, actually setting up stunts to make me laugh. He has personality.

It's entirely possible that, rather than possesing some degree of consciousness, he is just mimicing some hallmarks of consciousness. It's also possible, from what I've read, that humans are not actually conscious, but they only have the illusion of consciousness. Until people who know more about consciousness than I do can come to agreement on what consciousness is, I wouldn't rule out the possiblity that my dog has it to some degree.

[ March 12, 2002: Message edited by: three4jump ]</p>

ShottleBop

We have two dogs (one, a Royal Standard poodle, male, and the other, a Standard poodle, female). The male likes to chew on rawhide bones; the female doesn't (if we give one to her, she drops it). BUT--she will watch the male with his, and, if he gets distracted, she will grab his bone and run outside with it and hide it somewhere.

Definitely SOMETHING going on in there.

Corey Hammer

That's a really good question. It really depends on how you define consciousness. If you mean human-type, then no. If you mean self-awareness, then most likely not. If you mean the ability to engage in some form of goal directed cognitions, then I'd say there's a chance. (Note: Animal cognition is entirely outside my field of study; I'm talking completely out of my ass based what little I do about it and what I know about consciousness.) However, it's likely that at least all mammals share at varying levels some cognitive machinery that builds up to human-type consciousness, but are not conscious in a way we would understand.

Not really. Piaget really deals with the development of cognitive skills. Granted, infants are most likely not self-aware or conscious in the way we understand as adults, but by pre-operations, they most certainly are. However, Piaget was wrong in several majors ways on his timeline and in some parts, but the general ideas are supported. Piaget's Model would most likely not apply to dogs. It would be necessary to start from scratch.

I refer to Robert Sternberg's work (Triarchic Theory) and something called the PASS model I just read about in Current Issues in Psychological Science (it's the current issue). You can check out the research on them; it's some pretty good work.

No, he doesn't. That is instrumental conditioning. He's learned an association between sound patterns and a set of responses.

Again, it depends on how you want to define consciousness. Do we actually need consciousnes to live? No, not really. Most processing occurs subliminally (i.e., below awareness). However, consciousness may improve goal-motivated cognitions. In fact, one hypothesis is that consciousness is constructed moment-by-moment to review the status of goals. If so, dogs most likely do not do that to our level of complexity, but may do it at a lower level.

Jeremy Pallant

Many years ago I watched two of our dogs engaging in a very interesting behavior. It was the only time they engaged in this activity.

The bigger dog, Jason, a yellow labrador, had the smaller dog, Dusty, a very feisty bitser (bits of this, bits of that) in something of a quandry. Jason had Dusty's tennis ball between his paws. When Dusty would go to grab the ball, Jason would pick it up. Dusty would then retreat, and Jason would then carefully and deliberately place the ball back in its original position. This behavior was repeated several times. In between attempts Dusty would sit there clearly studying the situation with that frown on his face that some dogs can assume.

The really funny part was when Jason picked up the ball, and then offered it to Dusty, clearly teasing the smaller dog. Dusty refused to be drawn in. The emotions being expressed were quite complex, but chief amongst them was humor on behalf of Jason. Dusty eventally solved the problem by finally moving faster than Jason could react to grab his tennis ball back.