Animals Are More Rational than We Think

R.O rational is to have the ability to think, perhaps in a variety of ways, and use the results of this logic in implementing the individual goals. For a long time, the received opinion – unlimited – was that animals do not have such power. And if any animal appears to participate in thinking, this can be explained in another way. In this, I followed the opinion of the seventeenth -century philosopher, Rene Descartes, who believed that the animals were completely abstract.

If you teach Magpie to say a good day for her lover, when she sees her approach, this can only be by making this word an expression of one of her emotions. For example, it will be an expression of hope for eating, if it has always been given when he says that. Likewise, all things that all dogs, horses and monkeys are taught are just expressions of their fear, hope and joy, and therefore can be implemented without any thinking.

Through “Feelings”, Descartes means what we call now Emotions. He claimed that animals cannot cause and anything that seems to be the result of thinking that can be explained as an expression of or more emotions (ignoring, of course, the strong possibility that the emotions themselves are rational – but this is a completely different story).

Descartes’s claim is not only wrong, but not coherent. Why, for example, Magpie says “Good Day” to its owner? This is an expression of excitement, Descartes tells us. But why become excited? In the hope of nutrition, Descartes explains. But why do you hope to feed? Descarte’s answer: “If it has always been given when you say that.” This means that Magpie, as descartes represented by it, has drawn an inductive circular based on previous experience. This is a form of rationality. On Descartes’s special interpretation of Magpie behavior, it turned out to be rational.

David Hume-the Scottish experimental philosopher in the eighteenth century-is the poorest of Descartes:

Besides the irony of a clear fact, is to take a lot of pain to defend it; And do not show me a more clear fact, more than the monsters of thought and mind, as well as men. The arguments in this case are very clear, so that they never escape from the most expensive and ignorant.

I think it is fair to say that the last decades of research in comparative psychology collected a set of evidence that Hume strongly prefers to Descartes. This full research can not be wiped here. However, after Descartes, the wider Magpie family – Corvids – is a good place to spend brief brief.

The Corvid family includes the crows, the crows, the rut, the vises, the Jakdaz and the Magpies, among others. Corvids is MacGYVERS in the animal world, who are able to manufacture a variety of tools, for various purposes, often with very small or non -preparation time. Imagine a delicious top that lies on a platform far from hand. You know that if you pay a specific button, one of the two ends of the statute will fall, and the vaccine will be deposited inside your grip. Unfortunately, the button is far. There is a stick nearby, but even if you have grabbed it, the button remains out of your grip. However, it is tied to the side of your body is a piece of chain, wrapped around another stick. This second stick can be connected to the first (designed in this way), and the accessible button. Can you do this?

If you are a new wig, you can be able to do so. In fact, if you are a new Calidonian Crowe, you may be able to do so In your first attemptWith no practice at all. You may also be accustomed to sticks sticks to make hooks, from Bend wires With the same effect, to make tools that you can use to extract food from hard -to -reach places.

If a person is present, the dogs prefer to stare on their face, in order to get some clues.

The exploits of the tool industry from Corvids will take many books. But the capabilities of making tools are widely distributed through the animal kingdom. There are animals that we expect to make tools –Like chimpanzee– They do this, using rocks routinely to break the nuts, using branches to hunt termites from their hills, and make the spears to hunt children. But there are also those who may not expect to have such capabilities.

There are reddish octopus, adept at Manufacture of shelter From coconut a half shell. It may be the most surprising thing, at least for me, is the American crocodile that, where it floats without mobility in the water, will sometimes arrange a group of branches to rest on the hook. Do this To lure a fatal Birds are nesting looking for branches. The crocodile does this only during the nesting season, which indicates at least some seasons of the seasons and their effects on the behavior of things that he loves to eat.

The use of the tool is an example of causal thinking. When any animal precedes causal, it explains the understanding of the properties of things, and how these properties can be used to seek to achieve their goals. The causal logic is one of the forms that rationality can take. They are widely distributed throughout the animal kingdom, and for clear reasons: some kind animals – small animals that require their presence in the actual time to changes in environmental conditions – will not last long without them. Many animals are qualified to be rational in this sense.

When any animal precedes causal, it explains the understanding of the properties of things, and how these properties can be used to seek to achieve their goals.

Another form that may be rationalized is logical thinking. Logically, the mind is according to the rules of logic, instead of causal or mechanical waves of organisms. The wonderful old philosopher, Chrysipus, once a story, is an early intellectual experience, for a dog that traces a rabbit. Running, nose on the floor, the dog reaches a triple fork on the road. Soon inhale the first two tracks, and not to find the smell in either of the first two, it immediately runs in the third track, without costing himself the trouble of inhaling it first. If the dog was able to do this, he would have done a logical conclusion of the model:

Either a or b or c; Not a; No b; So, c

This is a copy of three options for what is known as detailed logical measurement or Modus Tollendo Ponns. In a more standard form, they are formed, a detailed systematic form that looks like:

Either a or b; Not a; So, b

This is an example of logical thinking, not causal. The ability to implement this rule has been tested in several types of animals. In the detailed scheme, all tests are differences in the same topic. Submit an animal with two transparent vessels: A and B. Both are empty in the beginning – and this animal appears. Then the animal sees one of the tried to feed one of the vessels, but specifically that is hidden from the animal with a barrier. Then the experimenter reveals that one ship – Say, the A -ship is empty. Then both fools are placed in front of the animal, and it is allowed to choose one of them. If the animal is able to carry out the uninterrupted logical measurement, it should choose the bowl b. Several types have succeeded in this task, including Great monkeysand Monkeysand CrowsAnd Dogs.

Dogs are my favorite condition. While dogs show that they can think of this way, it seems that all the things that have been taken into account, do not prefer that. They usually pass the test only when the cups are treated remotely. If a person is present, you will prefer the dogs to stare on their face, with the aim of getting some clues, or persuading them to solve the problem, rather than doing hard work to think through themselves. In this regard, it is clear that dogs sympathize with the observation of the philosopher Alfred North Whitery: “Thought operations are similar to the horsemen in the battle – they are completely limited in the number, and require new horses, and they should only take place in decisive moments.”

However, some philosophers still argue that animals are unable to logically think. For example, Jose Luis Permidz Argue That such logic requires understanding relationships between ideas: “Consider a conditional idea of ​​the type that can be expressed in the sentence” if AN B. ”to entertain such thought is to understand that two ideas are related in a certain way – that is, the second thought cannot be wrong if the first thought is true.” However, animals, as it argues, is not able to ideas with a higher arrangement: they cannot think about their ideas and therefore cannot understand the relationships between those ideas. Therefore, Bermúdez claims, animals cannot logically think.

However, this argument is strong like her initial assumption – that logical logic involves understanding relations between ideas – this is very unreasonable. According to Bermúez, to implement a separate logical measurement of the type involved in the tests shown above, what the animal needs to understand is:

Either thinking that food in the A cup A is correct or that the food in the cup B is correct. The idea that in A is a mistake. Therefore, thinking that in B is correct.

But this is a complex, unnecessary account of the ability to implement the broken logical measurement. Every animal really needs to be understood:

Either the food is present in the cup or in the cup B. Not in A. Therefore, it should be in B.

It is true that in a preliminary logical semester, when students are taught what logical inferences are, including detailed logical measurement, the trainer may be well likely to ideas – or perhaps probably, proposals, contents of ideas – to explain what makes logical inferences valid. But children can carry out logical inferences without a long time before the foot is placed in a logical category (if they do it). It is assumed that this ability is based on a less developed understanding in theory that if the world is a specific method (for example, the food is not in Cup A) and then it is He should In another way (food in the cup B). There is no reason to assume that this understanding requires thinking about ideas or understanding proposals – but every reason to admit it is thinking.

this condition Excerpt Animal rightsand Written by Mark Roland, it was reprinted with the permission of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lead: Goodfocated / Shutterstock

• Mark Rolands

  Spread on February 28, 2025

  Mark Rolands is a professor and head of the Department of Philosophy at Miami University. He is composed of more than 20 books, including the best international sale books The philosopher and wolf and Animal rights.

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