• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 694 0

the performance of all dogs, it looks as though we could say that dogs are, at the very least, able to learn by watching others in particular social contexts—when food is at stake, for instance. One final experiment suggests something even more impressive: that dogs may actually understand the concept of imitation. The single subject, an assistant dog trained to work with the blind, had already learned by operant conditioning to do a number of non-obvious actions on command: to lie down, turn around in a circle, put a bottle in a box. What the experimenters wondered was whether he could do these actions not just to a command, but after seeing someone else do the action themselves. Sure enough, the dog ably learned to turn around in a circle not after the Turn around in a circle command, but on simply seeing a human do such a thing, followed by the imitation request Do it! They then examined what he would do when seeing a human do a new, completely odd action, such as running off to push a swing, tossing a bottle, or suddenly walking around someone else and returning to their starting spot.

He did it. It was as though this dog had learned the concept imitate, and, given that notion, could apply it more or less in any direction. To do this, he had to map his body onto a human's: where a person tossed a bottle by hand, the dog used his mouth; he used his nose to push the swing. This is not the final word about imitation (just ask your dog to copy your swing-pushing, and you can see how results do not always generalize), but these dogs' abilities are suggestive of something besides mindless mimicry. Dogs may be enabled to imitate by the same ability—almost compulsion—to look at us that allows them to use us to learn how to act. That is what I see in Pump's morning stretch alongside me.

THEORY OF MIND

I open the door stealthily and Pump's there, not two feet away, walking toward the rug with something in her mouth. She stops in her tracks and looks over her shoulder at me, her ears down, her eyes wide. In her mouth is an unidentifiable curved form. As I slowly approach, she wags low, ducks her head, and in the moment that she opens her mouth to get a better grip on her find I see it: the cheese left out on the counter to warm. The brie. The entire enormous round of brie. She gulps two gulps and it's gone, down the gullet.

Think of the dog caught in the act of stealing food from the table … or looking at you squarely in the eyes with a plea to go out, be fed, be tickled. When I see Pump, mouth full of brie, seeing me, I know she's going to make a move; when she sees me seeing her, does she know I'm going to try to thwart it? My strong impression is that she does: the moment I open the door and she looks at me, we both know what the other is going to do.

The study of animal cognition reaches its pinnacle in addressing just this kind of scene: one raising the question of whether an animal conceives of others as independent creatures with their own, separate minds. This ability seems more than any other skill, habit, or behavior to capture what it is like to be a human: we think about what others are thinking. This is called having a theory of mind.

Even if you've never heard of theory of mind, chances are you nonetheless have a very advanced one. It allows you to realize that others have perspectives different from your own, and therefore have their own beliefs; different things they know and don't know; a distinct understanding of the world. Without one, others' behavior, even the simplest acts, would be utterly mysterious, arising from unknown motivations and leading to unpredictable consequences. Trying to guess what a man approaching you, mouth agape, arm raised high, hand waving frantically, is going to do is greatly aided by having a theory of mind. It's called a theory because minds are not directly observable, so we extrapolate backward from actions or utterances to the mind that prompted that act or remark.

We aren't born thinking about others' minds, of course. It is quite likely that we aren't