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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the Vault for an older episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. This was originally from February. This is

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Speaker 1: an older episode than most of the Vault episodes we've

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Speaker 1: been doing recently, but this was an episode that our

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Speaker 1: previous co host, Christian Saga, and I did where we

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Speaker 1: talked about the work of the Dutch American primatologist Friends

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Speaker 1: to Vall We I think we talked about his book

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Speaker 1: Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

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Speaker 1: All right, let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Christian Saga and I'm Joe McCormick, and our regular host

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb is not with us today. Where is he?

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Speaker 1: He is on the beach somewhere, a beach. I don't

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Speaker 1: know which beach, but he just referred to it Stephen

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Speaker 1: King's Beach World. I think it might be the beach

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Speaker 1: from that Leonardo DiCaprio movie where he punches the shark

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Speaker 1: in the face. Did you ever read that book. I

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Speaker 1: didn't read the book, but I like, Um, what's the

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Speaker 1: guy who wrote that? Alex Garland. Yeah, Alex wrote twenty

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Speaker 1: days later I think he did. Yeah, and he also

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Speaker 1: just worked on x Makina, that movie that came out

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Speaker 1: it's a good one, and directed it. Yeah. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: we're already off on a tangent. But what are we

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Speaker 1: going to be talking about today? Well, this is going

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Speaker 1: to be the first part of a two part episode

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Speaker 1: on animal cognition, animal intelligence exactly how smart are all

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Speaker 1: the beasts that occupied this planet? Yeah? So, uh, Joe

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Speaker 1: and I both have dogs, and sometimes our dogs get

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Speaker 1: together and play. We have plain aids. Joe's dog is

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Speaker 1: named Charlie, and my dogs are Winchester and see Blue.

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Speaker 1: And we like our dogs a lot. I think it's

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Speaker 1: fair to say we love our dogs. I hate my dog.

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Speaker 1: I know I love my dog, and my dog loves

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Speaker 1: your dog. So if you this is a thing you

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Speaker 1: should know out there. If Christian loans me a book

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Speaker 1: and I bring the book into my house and I'm

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Speaker 1: sitting on the couch reading it, my dog Charlie will

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Speaker 1: come sit next to me. Then he will get a

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Speaker 1: crazy look in his eye and begin to sniff the

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Speaker 1: book vigorously and sniff all over it. And what we

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Speaker 1: figured out is that probably it's that this book has

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Speaker 1: been in Christian's house and it smells like Christian's dogs

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Speaker 1: Charlie's friend. Yeah. So right there, just in a very

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Speaker 1: personal anecdote situation between the two of us, we have

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Speaker 1: a example of animal emotion and or intelligence it could be.

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Speaker 1: And so whenever you see an animal behavior, there's always

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Speaker 1: gonna be questions about how that behavior is brought about.

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Speaker 1: Is the animal acting purely on instinct? Is the animal

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Speaker 1: having thoughts? Is it putting things together in its head

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Speaker 1: and a conscious way? And in a lot of cases,

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Speaker 1: it's difficult for us to know, right Like, we always

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Speaker 1: want to know what the minds of our pets are like,

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Speaker 1: but it can it can be a black box to us.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we we just perceive behaviors and we can't see

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Speaker 1: inside the box to know what's triggering the behaviors. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So that leads us to our main expert that we're

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Speaker 1: going to be consulting for these episodes, and he's a

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Speaker 1: guy named and this is how I'm going to pronounce

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Speaker 1: it for this episode, Franz Davol. He's a Dutch primatologist

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Speaker 1: and pathologist, but he refers to himself, as we're going

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Speaker 1: to discuss through this episode, as a researcher of evolutionary cognition.

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Speaker 1: And he's actually based here in Atlanta at Emory University.

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Speaker 1: He's also a director at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center,

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Speaker 1: which is also based out of here, uh and he

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Speaker 1: studies primate social behavior. Now we're gonna be talking about

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Speaker 1: Dr Duvall's work in today's episode and then the next episode,

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Speaker 1: but we're also going to be bringing him on the

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Speaker 1: show to chat with us in the next episode, so

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Speaker 1: be sure to come back for that next time. So

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Speaker 1: the reason why we're talking about devolve specifically and his

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Speaker 1: his work but also his survey of the history of

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Speaker 1: animal intelligence is because he came out with a book

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Speaker 1: last year called Are We Smart Enough To Know? How

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Speaker 1: Smart Animals Are? So not the catchiest title in the world,

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Speaker 1: but it's a really good title because it very well

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Speaker 1: encapsulates the core question of the book. Um, it's not

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Speaker 1: just how smart animals are, though that is a primary

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Speaker 1: concern of of the book and and his research, but

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Speaker 1: it's also about if they are smart how would we

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Speaker 1: know it. Would we be clever enough to figure out

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Speaker 1: ways to detect complex intelligence and cognition in animals or

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Speaker 1: are we so limited by our own narrow worldview that

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Speaker 1: we are unable to find the ways to see the

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Speaker 1: intelligence in these other creatures? Right? And he says right upfront,

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Speaker 1: probably in the like first five page, is the answer

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Speaker 1: is yes, but there are some qualifiers, right, which is basically, uh,

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Speaker 1: that we're getting there, We're working on we're getting better

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Speaker 1: at it. Um. Now, some background on him. He got

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Speaker 1: his doctorate in biology in ninety seven, and he's most

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Speaker 1: known for his research on empathy and primates, which is

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Speaker 1: something we're gonna be covering in the episode after this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He published fifteen books and has over a dozen articles.

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Speaker 1: Guy's I think it's fair to say prolific uh. And

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Speaker 1: his focus has been on research related to primate alliance, formation, reconciliation,

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Speaker 1: and quote the roots of moral behavior in the most

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Speaker 1: political of animals meaning us. Right. So yeah, Well, one

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Speaker 1: of one of his early books was, for example, about

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Speaker 1: Machiavellian behavior in chimpanzees, which is uh, which is great

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Speaker 1: like the idea of looking at the politics of chimpanzee

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Speaker 1: behavior through the eyes of jockeying for position and forming alliances,

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Speaker 1: trying to gain power, seeing the will to power in

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Speaker 1: our in our closest ape cousins. So have you heard

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Speaker 1: another anecdote? Have you heard this anecdote about Daval and

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Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter and New Gingrich. No, I've heard about uh.

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Speaker 1: I think that New Gingrich put one of Duval's books

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Speaker 1: on a reading list for his uh for I don't

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Speaker 1: know who, for people, for people in Congress, or for somebody. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it might have just been his staff, I'm not sure.

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Speaker 1: But the story, the way that I read it through

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Speaker 1: Daval in an interview, was essentially, I can't remember which

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Speaker 1: books were which, but Carter read one of his books

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Speaker 1: and Gingrich read one of his books, and both of

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Speaker 1: them liked it. And Daval was basically like, I really

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Speaker 1: wish that they had swapped the books, because I think

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Speaker 1: they both would have gotten something else. Oh, so, like

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Speaker 1: one is about jockeying for power among primates and another

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Speaker 1: one is about empathy among primates. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: So it's kind of fun, like little anecdote, And he

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Speaker 1: said he met with Jimmy Carter actually I wonder if

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Speaker 1: he told him that when he out with him. But uh,

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Speaker 1: so I need to go to the dark side Garter,

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Speaker 1: I don't. That's not the impression that I get from him, actually,

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Speaker 1: and we're not going to talk about it a ton,

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Speaker 1: uh in these episodes applying his work to modern politics.

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Speaker 1: But he that is something he does with his work. Um,

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Speaker 1: what we're more going to focus on is this book

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Speaker 1: and how it summarizes between case studies and a history

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Speaker 1: of the discipline. I guess i'll call it of looking

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Speaker 1: at animal intelligence, uh specifically how it is coming to

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Speaker 1: defy the notion that humans are alone as moral in

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Speaker 1: thinking animals. Yeah, I think one of the central things

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Speaker 1: we want to talk about, and I'll revisit this later

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Speaker 1: in this episode, I'm sure is the idea of claims

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Speaker 1: of uniqueness about humans that that's central to this book,

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Speaker 1: and an idea that is the Devol attacks with two

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Speaker 1: swords in each hand. I would say he's a handed

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Speaker 1: its actor. Yeah, nice, I like that. I think I've

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Speaker 1: read that. Actually, if you hold swords in each hand,

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Speaker 1: it's not actually an advantage in battle, Like you can't

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Speaker 1: balance well. By D and D rules, you get a

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Speaker 1: negative two to one hand attack. Something along those lines.

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Speaker 1: I did not know that unless you have a special feat. Okay,

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Speaker 1: well let's go back to We started with the idea

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Speaker 1: of our pets. You know, we want to get in

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Speaker 1: their minds, but sometimes they can feel like a black box. Um.

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Speaker 1: So when you see an animal perform of behavior, an

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Speaker 1: animal does something, I'd say that there are three main

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Speaker 1: explanations you can go to, and it's not like the

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Speaker 1: explanation is just one or the other. Usually complex behaviors

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Speaker 1: might be explained by combinations of the following, but they're

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Speaker 1: they're basically three wells you can draw from to explain behaviors.

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Speaker 1: One is instinct responding to instinct. An instinct is a

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Speaker 1: hardwired behavior. It's an activity that we imagine being done

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Speaker 1: automatically and programmed by your genes. It's without much adaptive

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Speaker 1: flexibility or applicability to solving new problems. So birds fly

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Speaker 1: south for the winter. There are just natural triggers that

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Speaker 1: hit their brains in a certain way. When those triggers

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Speaker 1: hit their brains, they fly south. When I think of

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Speaker 1: instinct in my human brain, when I think about my

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Speaker 1: brain and how it reacts, it's like that my my

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Speaker 1: brain has that certain wiring, right, and that those pathways

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Speaker 1: are aligned to respond a certain way, to react a

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Speaker 1: certain way to things. But you can theoretically train those

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Speaker 1: pathways to change right, right, And that's the second thing

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Speaker 1: that would be conditioning. So first, you've got instinct that's inborn,

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Speaker 1: it's determined by your genes. But you've also had conditioning,

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Speaker 1: which is learned behaviors. You've had experiences. Some experiences turned

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Speaker 1: out good, some turned out bad. You can think of

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Speaker 1: those results as rewards and punishments. And thus conditioning also

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Speaker 1: leads us to cause new behaviors. If you've done something

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Speaker 1: that has gotten you a reward in the past, you'll

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Speaker 1: become conditioned to do that behavior more in the future. Now,

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that these things are like one to

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Speaker 1: one in an analogy, but it's sort of the nature

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Speaker 1: nurture argument, right, No, I think it totally is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So instinct is nature, Uh, conditioning is nurture. It's your environment,

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Speaker 1: it's what you've been conditioned to do. But then there's

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Speaker 1: a third explanation you can talk about. And the third

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Speaker 1: explanation is more complex than the other two. It's cognition. Right,

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Speaker 1: So humans do things all the time that are not

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Speaker 1: easily explicable, or at least we would say some some

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Speaker 1: you know, behaviorist or somebody might disagree with us, but

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Speaker 1: at least I would say, are not easily explicable as

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Speaker 1: either instinct or conditioned uh conditioned responses. They're complex behaviors

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Speaker 1: that seem to emerge from patterns of thinking. Right, right,

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Speaker 1: So before we get like way too far down the

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Speaker 1: rabbit hole here, let's like stop and define what we

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Speaker 1: mean here when we're talking about intelligence and cognition. What

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Speaker 1: are at least And let's keep in mind too, we're

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Speaker 1: keeping this within Duvol's framework. So maybe, um, you're out

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Speaker 1: there listening and you've got experience in psychology or in

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Speaker 1: biology and some other uh part of the discipline, and

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Speaker 1: you might disagree that we would love to hear from

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Speaker 1: you on that, But we're specifically we're not saying this

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Speaker 1: is the absolute truth. We're saying this is Duval's UH

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Speaker 1: schema that he presents us with in this book. Right, sure,

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Speaker 1: So cognition, well, it's basically information processing, right His direct

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Speaker 1: quote is it's the mental transformation of sensory input into

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Speaker 1: knowledge about the environment and the flexible application of this knowledge.

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Speaker 1: So that would be sort of like, um, I think

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Speaker 1: for example of a multi use tool. Okay, an example

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Speaker 1: of cognition might be, uh, you pick up a tool

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Speaker 1: like a hammer, and you figure out that with a hammer,

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Speaker 1: you can drive nails, you can crack nuts, you can

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Speaker 1: smash windows if you want to, you could maybe uh,

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Speaker 1: you can maybe throw the hammer at somebody and get

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Speaker 1: a laugh out of your buddies. Depending on the hammer,

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Speaker 1: you can pull nails out right, Yeah, certainly if it's

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Speaker 1: a claw, hummer, claw hammer, that's a good word. It's

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Speaker 1: great one word or a phrase. I don't know, maybe

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Speaker 1: too anyway, But this is this is flexible application of knowledge.

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Speaker 1: You you take some knowledge about your environment, in this

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Speaker 1: case about the uses of a tool. You understand the

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Speaker 1: affordances of this tool, the different things it can do,

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Speaker 1: and then you can apply it to new situations that

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Speaker 1: you've never been presented before. That would probably be an

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Speaker 1: example of cognition. So then we get to intelligence. And

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Speaker 1: I've already used some D and D analogies and here

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Speaker 1: you know, out there listeners, if you're you know, you've

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Speaker 1: been around in our audience for a while, we kind

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Speaker 1: of throw that stuff out there. Intelligence and D and

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Speaker 1: D is basically like your your aptitude at certain things,

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Speaker 1: how much knowledge you have in your head? Right. Uh here,

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Speaker 1: what we mean by intelligence is processing that information from

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Speaker 1: cognition successfully. So you're intelligent if you can successfully process

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Speaker 1: that information, right, it's doing cognition good. Yeah. I like that.

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Speaker 1: That's the quote of the episode one of I called

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Speaker 1: the episode that do cognition good? Do cognition good? I'd say,

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Speaker 1: we do cognition okay? Uh no. I. So there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of different definitions of intelligence. One that I

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Speaker 1: think goes pretty much along with this, but that I

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Speaker 1: really like is that intelligent. And Robert and I just

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Speaker 1: talked about this in another episode we did. I like,

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Speaker 1: the definition is of intelligence as uh, the tendency of

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Speaker 1: a system to accelerate the solution of problems. So like

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Speaker 1: when you solve problems better than chance, when you start

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Speaker 1: to do better than random behavior, that is degrees of intelligence. Yeah. Um.

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Speaker 1: But I think I think the key to understanding this

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Speaker 1: idea of cognition, and the key in this book is flexibility. Right. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So animals can, as we've said, performed tasks that seem

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Speaker 1: very complex, but they are still acting on coded instinct.

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Speaker 1: Cognition happens when animals show the flexible application of knowledge,

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Speaker 1: and that's what to keep in mind. The animal knows

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Speaker 1: something and is able to put that knowledge to use

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Speaker 1: in a novel way. So an example of this would

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Speaker 1: be the episode that Robert and I just published previous

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Speaker 1: to this about Pomp Pomp crabs or the Boxer Crab.

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Speaker 1: Do you know about this, well, I've seen you guys

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Speaker 1: talking about it a little bit. Yeah, So the we

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Speaker 1: have just discovered, and we did a whole episode on

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Speaker 1: it that these crabs um they use c anemonies as

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Speaker 1: weapons and tools in their claws. And not only that,

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Speaker 1: but if they only have one of them, because they

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Speaker 1: like to dual wield, they will take the other one

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Speaker 1: and they will very purposely rip it in half so

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Speaker 1: that it causes it to regenerate into two different anemonies again,

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Speaker 1: so they're forcing reproduction upon the as anemonies. That is

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Speaker 1: theoretically an example of animal intelligence, because not only are

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Speaker 1: they tool using animals, but they know how to exactly

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Speaker 1: rip apart another living being to turn them into like

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Speaker 1: a tool. Now we're brought back to the initial problem here,

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Speaker 1: the black box problem, because I could look at that

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Speaker 1: and say, that's very impressive behavior that almost makes me

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Speaker 1: want to think, Wow, maybe crabs are much smarter than

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Speaker 1: we thought. But then again, on the other hand, I'm like, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's an invertebrate. It doesn't have much brain

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Speaker 1: to speak of. Uh, So is that really cognition or

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Speaker 1: is that just some kind of weird application of an instinctual,

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Speaker 1: hard coded behavior that we're not understanding, some kind of

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Speaker 1: like u um uh symbiotic relationship between these two species

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Speaker 1: that's just developed, instinctually, fully evolved, and that it's not

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Speaker 1: like the crab has to think it through uh And

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Speaker 1: I I don't know. I mean, it's hard to tell there.

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Speaker 1: The fact that the crab has such a simple nervous

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Speaker 1: system would tend to make me want to assume that

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Speaker 1: that it's more likely to be instinctual, But I don't know.

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Speaker 1: That's what we're We're in the black boxes exactly where

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Speaker 1: we land with this current like area of the discipline.

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Speaker 1: It's like, you see a study like that, we don't

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Speaker 1: exactly know how to approach it in terms of saying

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Speaker 1: is that animal intelligent or not? Right? And that gets

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Speaker 1: us to one of the ideas that I think is

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Speaker 1: underpinning the discussion of this book. So, when we talk

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Speaker 1: about animal cognition and a scientific context, I want to

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Speaker 1: ask a question of you Christ Yes, this is something

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Speaker 1: I think we should consider throughout both of these episodes.

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Speaker 1: What is the correct position of a scientific skeptic on

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Speaker 1: the subject. Like, so, if you are being skeptical of

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Speaker 1: new claims, what is the default assumption before any tests

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Speaker 1: are done about animal cognition? Uh So back up and

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Speaker 1: give some context. Default assumptions. We use them all the time,

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Speaker 1: generally our default assumption, and there are things that seem

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Speaker 1: most in line with what we'd expect given the rest

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Speaker 1: of nature and natural law. It's what you'd think was

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Speaker 1: true if you hadn't done any experiments yet. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but see, it's interesting that you're using the term skeptic

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Speaker 1: because duvol uses that term um and it's more along

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Speaker 1: the lines that how I think of it, based on

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Speaker 1: his book, is that these skeptics are looking for evidence

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Speaker 1: in laboratory and experimental settings exactly that that's what a

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Speaker 1: skeptic would do. I'm saying, like, what's the skeptical starting assumption?

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Speaker 1: You don't have any evidence yet, which would you just

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Speaker 1: assume is true. Would you assume that animals do have

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Speaker 1: cognition or would you just assume that they don't. Uh So, Obviously,

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Speaker 1: if somebody, if somebody publishes a study zoology papers saying

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Speaker 1: we found a Siberian freshwater fish that can die and

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Speaker 1: then spontaneously come back to life twelve days later, you're

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Speaker 1: going to be resistant to that idea, even if it's

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Speaker 1: published in a good journ all right, You're gonna be like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I you know, I want to understand

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Speaker 1: more about this. I'm skeptical of the findings. You'd want

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Speaker 1: to see it replicated. Just one person's first hand testimony

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Speaker 1: is probably not going to be good enough. Likewise, if

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Speaker 1: you had other crazy stuff, you know, I found a

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Speaker 1: tree frog in the rainforest that poop's weapons grade plutonium,

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Speaker 1: you would just think like, I don't quite believe that.

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Speaker 1: I'd want really really good evidence before I believe that's right. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: you definitely have to click through the headline, like, that's

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Speaker 1: not one way you can just read the headline and

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Speaker 1: Facebook and just trust it, right. Uh And so that's

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Speaker 1: because a joke everybody you should click on everything. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I don't know well, you should click on everything you're

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Speaker 1: interested in. That's what I mean. You should slick on

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Speaker 1: all the melts. You shouldn't just read headlines and assume

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Speaker 1: that they're true. Yeah. Also side note, if you're going

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Speaker 1: to argue with an article, read the article first. Don't

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Speaker 1: argue with the headline. In fact, we're gonna get to

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Speaker 1: that later on. But the ball has strong feelings about that. Right.

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Speaker 1: But so there's the question. You you've got this standard

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Speaker 1: skeptical assumption, the starting place, the default assumption. Which way

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Speaker 1: should it go with the idea of animal cognition. Should

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Speaker 1: we just assume that animals are stimulus response machines without

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Speaker 1: anything going on inside unless somebody proves otherwise. Or should

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Speaker 1: we assume that they process information and have interiority just

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Speaker 1: like us and arrive at new ideas unless somebody proves otherwise. Um,

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Speaker 1: So they're actually historically totally different ways to go on this.

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Speaker 1: So one way that I think is much more in

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Speaker 1: line with Devols thinking is the famously skeptical eighteenth century

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Speaker 1: Scottish philosopher David Hume. Right, he brings Hume up in

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Speaker 1: this book. Yeah, and so Hume says the natural starting

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Speaker 1: position is animals do think, it's obvious. And what Hume

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Speaker 1: says is, um quote, no truth appears to me more

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Speaker 1: evident than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason

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Speaker 1: as well as man. So I think it's important to

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Speaker 1: note here that Hume, let's repeat that again, he's an

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Speaker 1: eighteenth century Scottish philosopher. Right, so there's this understanding at least,

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Speaker 1: this is what I got from Duval's book, that this

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Speaker 1: kind of thinking was actually common leading up to in

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Speaker 1: a little bit after Darwin. Um yeah, well, I mean

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Speaker 1: this kind of thinking I think was there with Darwin.

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Speaker 1: Darwin believe Darwin did too. Yeah, But then we got

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Speaker 1: into a mode, I would say, uh, in the second

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Speaker 1: half of the nineteenth century that leaned more toward the

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Speaker 1: idea what we were going to be referring to as

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Speaker 1: behaviorism here, Uh yeah, or um well, just denying animal

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Speaker 1: cognition in general. But it's often associated with the behavior

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Speaker 1: at school of psychology. Right, So what's the reasoning behind

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Speaker 1: Hume's default assumption than animals think. He says this quote

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Speaker 1: tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals

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Speaker 1: to those we ourselves perform. So because animals behave like humans,

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Speaker 1: behave that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours,

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Speaker 1: and the same principle of reasoning, carried one step farther,

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Speaker 1: will make us conclude that, since our internal actions resemble

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Speaker 1: each other, the causes from which they're derived must also

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Speaker 1: be resembling. When any hypothesis therefore is advanced to explain

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Speaker 1: a mental operation which is common to men and beasts,

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Speaker 1: we must apply the same hypothesis to both. So there

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Speaker 1: he's saying, like, Okay, humans have cognition, they have behavior.

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Speaker 1: Animals have behavior that seems parallel to human behavior, so

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Speaker 1: we just extend back and say they probably have cognition too.

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Speaker 1: And I would say that's like generally before like researching

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Speaker 1: for this episode where I sort of landed on these lines, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: I I see my dogs every day, I interact with

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Speaker 1: other animals in my life. That's how I feel about them.

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Speaker 1: Surely they must be thinking and having emotions because it

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Speaker 1: resembles my own experience. Yeah, that's totally my default, my

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Speaker 1: intuitive assumption. Then again, I think our our intuitions we

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Speaker 1: should be strongly suspicious of. We we want to feel

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Speaker 1: certain ways. We like our pets, we want to think

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Speaker 1: they're like us. So we should be open to the

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Speaker 1: opposite idea too. But I think that's also my natural

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Speaker 1: starting place is that I don't know where animals we

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Speaker 1: think other animals, and even if in some rudimentary way,

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Speaker 1: probably do in some sense kind of think. And that

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Speaker 1: could have something to do with where you and I

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Speaker 1: fall in terms of like where we live in history. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, I mean like if if we were recording

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Speaker 1: this podcast in the late nineteenth century, I don't know

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Speaker 1: how we do, that would be like a crank and

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Speaker 1: a policy. But but anyways, somebody taking really crappy dictation

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Speaker 1: exactly we would we would probably have different assumptions based

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Speaker 1: on cultural expectations. Sure, and this idea has been It

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Speaker 1: wasn't just you know, later after jar when it wasn't

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Speaker 1: just like people in the behavior at school that didn't

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Speaker 1: like this idea of animal cognition. For example, you go

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Speaker 1: way back to the philosopher Renee de cart Descartes Decartes.

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Speaker 1: He were so he thinks, well, I think, therefore I am,

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Speaker 1: but animals don't think. He regarded animals as automata or machines. Actually,

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Speaker 1: there's some scholarly back and forth. I tried to find

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Speaker 1: what's the best interpretation of what Decartes's position was. Did

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Speaker 1: he deny them all possible interiority of any kind. It's

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Speaker 1: not exactly clear, but in any case, he did not

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Speaker 1: think that animals could think. This is interesting to me because, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, I got the like very general philosophy one

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Speaker 1: oh one approach to Deckart when I was an undergraduate.

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Speaker 1: You know, Deckard had that that theory that he thought

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Speaker 1: hard on about whether or not he was just a

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Speaker 1: brain in a jar that like a demon was torturing

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Speaker 1: by like providing him like a matrix like sort of

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Speaker 1: virtual reality that he thought was the real world. It

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Speaker 1: was his total doubt about empiricism is that I can't

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Speaker 1: believe anything of my senses because it could be the

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Speaker 1: case that some magical being is is just giving me illusions. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but he would not think the same thing as possible

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Speaker 1: for a dog or a chimpanzee that maybe they're because

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Speaker 1: they're not even perceiving and he's part of their imagination. Right.

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Speaker 1: He wouldn't even consider that. And that goes right back

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Speaker 1: to the heart of all of this, which Duval comes

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Speaker 1: back to a lot, which is human centrism. Yeah, anthropocentrism. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He talks a lot in the book about anthropocentrism, the

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Speaker 1: idea of of humans being the you know, the center

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Speaker 1: of the universe, or humans being totally unique, humans being

426
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: the one thing that's different than everything else. Uh. And

427
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:23,440
Speaker 1: and I think we can talk about that a little

428
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 1: more towards the very end of this episode. But we

429
00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:29,960
Speaker 1: should come back to this, uh, this behaviorism ethology and

430
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:33,160
Speaker 1: and and cognition divide. All right, let's take a quick

431
00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:35,399
Speaker 1: break and when we get back, we'll talk more about

432
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: animals and devoll. So the way that duvol defines it,

433
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 1: as he says, you know, up until I don't know,

434
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,119
Speaker 1: like what would you say, maybe thirty years ago in

435
00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 1: the discipline even shorter, possibly that we've really been living

436
00:24:55,560 --> 00:25:00,879
Speaker 1: in a behaviorist influenced societ id when it comes to

437
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 1: thinking about animal intelligence or emotion. So the basic split

438
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 1: that he defines here in thinking about human to animal

439
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: cognition comes from the move from a hunter gatherer society

440
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: to an agricultural one. This is interesting because we're well

441
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 1: into agricultural society by the time, you know, behavioral thinking

442
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 1: comes right, right, but have been for what years? Yeah,

443
00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 1: But he says this is why science hast thought of

444
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:29,920
Speaker 1: animals as being subservient rather than us having an empathy

445
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 1: for a view of the world from their perspective in

446
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:34,040
Speaker 1: the way that we used to have to when we

447
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 1: would run around in the woods and either try to

448
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:39,640
Speaker 1: hunt them down or avoid being their prey. That's really

449
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: interesting because so if you're a hunter, an animal is

450
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: almost like an enemy. It's like a thing that you

451
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 1: have to you have to empathize with, you have to

452
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: understand its mode of thinking, and it's a very active

453
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 1: agent that you're in competition with, whereas an agricultural animal

454
00:25:54,840 --> 00:25:58,679
Speaker 1: is a tool. It's the thing you use. Yeah, exactly.

455
00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:03,399
Speaker 1: So the two dominant states of thought that have we've

456
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 1: really viewed animals with during this time have been either

457
00:26:08,160 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 1: like Joe mentioned that their stimulus response machines or and

458
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:16,680
Speaker 1: this is Devol's wording, that they're quote robots that are

459
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: endowed with instincts. He doesn't actually think they're mechanical robots.

460
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:24,440
Speaker 1: He means robots in sort of the metaphorical sense. Right. Uh.

461
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:28,639
Speaker 1: And anyone who thought about animal emotions at all was

462
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 1: just deemed unscientific and kind of blacklisted almost, right, And

463
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:38,560
Speaker 1: so skeptics for instance, believe that animals are trapped in

464
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 1: the present right, that they don't make plans for the future.

465
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: One example he gives is that they couldn't possibly say

466
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 1: goodbye to each other. But Duval argues otherwise, and he

467
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 1: provides examples in this book, especially from his own experience

468
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 1: working with primates. Right, he comes across this idea of

469
00:26:57,040 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: or not comes across. I'd say he coins this term.

470
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 1: I believe the term anthropo denial, yeah, which I found

471
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: is a very interesting principle and I wanted to stop

472
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 1: and linger on that for a second. That's cool with you.

473
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:12,680
Speaker 1: So it's related to the idea of anthropomorphism, which is

474
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: this concept that we often employee in a really accusatory way.

475
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: You know, I'm saying, uh, if you think your dog

476
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,400
Speaker 1: thinks like a human, if you think your dog loves you,

477
00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:27,399
Speaker 1: you're being anthropomorphic. You're you're turning the dog into a

478
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 1: human in your mind, and that's that's bad behavior. That's

479
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: being irrational. The dog is not like a human. Yeah,

480
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 1: it would even be like it's seen as like the

481
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: personification of an inanimate object in some sense, right, like

482
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: when when you get mad at your computer, my microphone

483
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: I've named my microphone Jimmy, and Jimmy doesn't like it

484
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 1: when I get too close and breathe into him like this, right,

485
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 1: something like that. They would go, oh, like, why would

486
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: you possibly think about a dog or an ape like that?

487
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: But that's not like a human at all, because humans

488
00:27:56,080 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 1: love it when you breathe into them. They do. That's

489
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,399
Speaker 1: how I expressed my love the human. What else is

490
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:06,239
Speaker 1: CPR for? That's recreational, right, yeah, uh no. But so

491
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 1: a lot of times the charge of anthropomorphism, I think

492
00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: is a fair one. Like a lot of times people

493
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:15,680
Speaker 1: do draw unjustified parallels between humans and something that isn't human.

494
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: One example would be if you have some fish in

495
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 1: a bowl and you see the fish touching their mouths together,

496
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 1: and you characterize that as kissing, you're probably anthropomorphizing, right,

497
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 1: because the similarity of the action to our human mouth

498
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: touching behavior. It's incidental. Like, it's not that the fish

499
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:37,679
Speaker 1: are having an emotional connection and they're sharing a passionate

500
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: kiss to show how much they love each other. It's

501
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 1: just a behavior that involves mouth touching that's unrelated to

502
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 1: our behavior that involves mouth touching, and fish don't use

503
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: tongue like they're not familiar with the French method, but

504
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: according to duvol Binobo's do indeed the French kiss. Yeah.

505
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: On the other hand, of all says that you can

506
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: practice the opposite of anthropomorphism, or maybe not the opposite,

507
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: the inverse, which is anthropo denial. It's an unjustified ape

508
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: a priori rejection of analogies between humans and non human

509
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: animals when those analogies are in fact apt. It's just

510
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: being prejudiced against comparing human and animal behaviors, even in

511
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 1: situations where those comparisons probably are in some sense justified.

512
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 1: The example here would be apes kissing. And this is

513
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: not like fish kissing, No, not at all. And Duval

514
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: has both experience with ape kissing and anthropo denial right like,

515
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:38,040
Speaker 1: he through much of his career and the work that

516
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 1: he's done, has had people say to him, this is

517
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: clearly not real science, like the things that you're saying

518
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: about these animals. And yet let's let's look at one

519
00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 1: of his case studies with these apes. What you mean

520
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 1: like tickling, well, tickling and kissing. Yeah, yeah, kissing is one.

521
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 1: Tickling is another one. So when you when you say,

522
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: uh so a young ape gets tickled. Right, you got

523
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 1: a chimpanzee baby, you tickle it and it makes rapid

524
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: in and out breathing noises. Should you call that laughter? Uh?

525
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: If you did, some people might scold you as being anthropomorphic, saying,

526
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 1: how can you know that this ape is laughing? Uh?

527
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't know, But it does seem like a

528
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 1: fair analogy because humans in chimpanzees or phylogenetically extremely close

529
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 1: and humans exhibit this behavior pretty much in the same

530
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: context being tickled, and so it just sort of does

531
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: make sense that you could say this is pretty much laughter. Right.

532
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: It might not be laughter in exactly the same way

533
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,080
Speaker 1: as human laughter. There might be very important differences, but

534
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:40,840
Speaker 1: it's also a close enough analogy that the human comparison

535
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: does make biological sense. Right. And then his other example

536
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: was the kissing that we've referred to, And if I

537
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: remember correctly, it was something along the lines of, Uh,

538
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: there was a researcher observing this practice between their banobo's right,

539
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: and then themselves sort of said, well, let's see what

540
00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 1: this is like. I'll show some affection to this and

541
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: I'll kiss this eight uh, and then got a mouthful

542
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: a tongue because it was just it was a powerful kisser.

543
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: The benobos have a different kissing culture. The benobos used

544
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:12,239
Speaker 1: more tongue than the chimpanzees doing. Apparently, this is this

545
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 1: is what we've learned, So we haven't always thought like

546
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: this though, Like I mentioned earlier, Darwin himself wrote about

547
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 1: animal emotions, for instance, and Aristotle actually classified animals in

548
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: his Scala not try. I think that's terrible Greek, but

549
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: I think that's what it was. It was like his

550
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: great chain of being. Yeah, it was his simple way

551
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 1: of measuring like animals by human standards. The implication, though,

552
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: until recently, has been that we study animal cognition only

553
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: so we can better understand ourselves. Why would we possibly

554
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: want to know what's going inside going on inside the

555
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 1: minds of fish? Right? Uh So Duval lays the blame

556
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 1: for this kind of thinking on the rise of behavioral psychology.

557
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 1: So he provides us with an example here, specifically looking

558
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: at these birds called kittie wakes. Right. So these are

559
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: birds in the gull family, and he talks about how

560
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: these birds nest on narrow cliffs, and they're different than

561
00:32:08,360 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: a lot of other birds because a lot of like

562
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 1: gulls other seabirds might nest in open areas where their

563
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: nests are open to invasion and predation and stuff like that.

564
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 1: So these nests are like really high up right, yeah. Yeah,

565
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 1: And so the the other seabirds might need to keep

566
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: a close eye on their offspring and make sure others

567
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: don't try to come into the nest. The kitty wakes don't.

568
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 1: The kitty wakes, you can, you can put a strange

569
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: young ling in their nests, and they don't seem they'll

570
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: treat it just like it's one of their own. They

571
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 1: don't recognize that it's an invader. And this seems to

572
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 1: be because the kitty wakes leave live on these little

573
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,520
Speaker 1: narrow cliffs where there's just not really much opportunity for

574
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 1: something else to get into the nest. Yeah, So why

575
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,480
Speaker 1: would they have developed the capacity to recognize the difference

576
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: between they're young and somebody else is young? Yeah, so,

577
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 1: he says. For the behaviorist though, such findings like this

578
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 1: are thoroughly puzzling. Too, similar birds differing so starkly and

579
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: what they learn makes no sense because learning is supposedly universal, right, So,

580
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 1: from the behaviorist perspective of the kitty wake should be

581
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: the same as any other bird, right, Right. So the

582
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 1: behaviorist idea is that behavior is explained by these universal

583
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 1: principles of reward and punishment, reinforcement. It's all conditioning based

584
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: on what has rewarded you or punished you in the past. Yeah.

585
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 1: So he draws the line and he says, the difference

586
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: between behaviorism and then this other school of thought called

587
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: ethology that we're going to get into has always been

588
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: one of human controlled versus natural behavior. Uh. And the

589
00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: tenant here is that comparative psychologists had animals perform arbitrary

590
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: tasks unrelated to the problems that they actually face in

591
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:49,080
Speaker 1: their natural environment. And this was how we gathered and

592
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: tested their intelligence. So, using the kitty wake example, we

593
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:55,479
Speaker 1: weren't you know, if you took them out of their

594
00:33:55,560 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: natural environment and you noticed that they didn't happen to

595
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: understand the difference. Betwe mean they're young and somebody else's young,

596
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 1: some other birds young. Then you would go, what's wrong

597
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 1: with this bird? Right? But when you understand the context

598
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: that the bird lives within, it makes more sense. This

599
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: is a big theme of dvl's book is the idea

600
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 1: of understanding. Uh. It's a it's a term that's known

601
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: as an animal's oom velt, and the oom velt is

602
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:24,879
Speaker 1: the idea of it's an animal's world view from its

603
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 1: natural place in the world. So each animal has its

604
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: own niche has its own way of interacting with its

605
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:35,840
Speaker 1: environment the things it naturally has to do. And sometimes

606
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 1: we might be totally unable to appreciate why an animal

607
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 1: behaves the way it does if we don't appreciate what

608
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:45,279
Speaker 1: its role within its natural environment is, what does it

609
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: normally have to do to survive? And those are the

610
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 1: things that define that animal's mentality. It would also be

611
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: things like that animals particular types of heightened senses. Its

612
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 1: peak specialization in the environment is the animal's oom velt.

613
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,840
Speaker 1: And if you don't understand that, you're probably going to

614
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:05,839
Speaker 1: be testing the animal in ways that are not appropriate

615
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 1: for that animal. Yeah, And he gets this term from

616
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:13,400
Speaker 1: a guy named Ya cub Funks Cull. This is a

617
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 1: tough name for me to pronounce, man, if you look

618
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 1: at all the consonants in front of me here. But

619
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: umvelt translates into surviving world and it's essentially describing an

620
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 1: animal sensory context. Of all calls this in his book,

621
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: he refers to it as the magic well of the

622
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 1: life of animals, right, and each each species has its

623
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: own magic well. The magic well is another really interesting

624
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:38,759
Speaker 1: idea that he draws on in the book repeatedly. That's

625
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,320
Speaker 1: a it's a metaphor for the idea of a well

626
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,120
Speaker 1: that the more you draw out of it, the more

627
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 1: it produces a well that never goes dry. Right, It's

628
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,560
Speaker 1: like the well wouldn't be like the golden goose because

629
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: if you keep if you try to get the gold

630
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:54,040
Speaker 1: out of the goose, it dies. This would be the

631
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: opposite of that. This would be like the more you

632
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 1: kill the goose and pull the gold out, the more

633
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 1: gold is in it. I didn't know that the golden

634
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: goose died if you just kept taking gold out of it.

635
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: Is that the myth? Well, No, I think it's that

636
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: the goose lays golden eggs and then somebody wants to

637
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 1: get the gold out of the middle of it. They

638
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: kill it, and then there's no gold inside and realize that. Yeah,

639
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:14,520
Speaker 1: that's the story. It's to punish you for being greedy

640
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 1: and not being happy with what you have. But but

641
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:18,799
Speaker 1: the analogy is the golden egg once a day and

642
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:22,800
Speaker 1: you want, okay, right, and so I stretched this analogy

643
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: to a really torture rack position. But this would be

644
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 1: the goose that you kill it and you open it

645
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: up and it just keeps producing more and more gold

646
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:34,160
Speaker 1: from the inside. It is a magically re replenishing source.

647
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: And the idea here would be a magically replenishing source

648
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 1: of new ideas and information. Interesting things to learn about

649
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:43,440
Speaker 1: an animal. One example would be the b But with

650
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 1: many species, you can find their magic well. And once

651
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:50,359
Speaker 1: you have found their magic well, you know they're sort

652
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: of area of specialization you can you continue to find

653
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 1: more and more surprising and interesting things about them. Yeah.

654
00:36:56,600 --> 00:36:58,760
Speaker 1: The way he says it is that animals are driven

655
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 1: to learn based on their context. So once we immerse

656
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,839
Speaker 1: ourselves within that, there's a whole magic well of things

657
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:08,960
Speaker 1: to learn about that animal and their intelligence. Uh. He

658
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 1: gives one example here, I like as like bringing it

659
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:17,359
Speaker 1: back to the behaviorism versus ethology sort of schism. He says,

660
00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:21,280
Speaker 1: one can train goldfish to play soccer and bears to dance.

661
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: I knew about the dancing. I didn't know you could

662
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: train gold fish to play soccer. But it sounds right,

663
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:27,240
Speaker 1: he says, it sounds like one of those good studies,

664
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: but does anyone believe that this tells us much about

665
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: the skills of human soccer stars or dancers. Makes a

666
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 1: good point there, right, you know, like, yeah, through conditioning,

667
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 1: you can get a fish to do this, or you

668
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: can get a bear to do this. But what does

669
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 1: that say about the human condition? Not a whole lot.

670
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: And what does that say about bears or fish Benga,

671
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: Probably not much about them either. Yeah, So I think,

672
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 1: as we mentioned at the top, he is a director

673
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: at the Yurkey's Center, which is here in Atlanta. That's

674
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 1: a primate study facility, and he says that in the

675
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, actually the center was found it in Florida,

676
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 1: and so there was a lot of tension there between

677
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: their staff and the behaviorists who came in and worked there,

678
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:11,520
Speaker 1: because the behaviorists wanted to starve the chimpanzees that they

679
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:13,799
Speaker 1: were testing so that they would be more likely to

680
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 1: respond to reward based conditioning. Uh. And he said the

681
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: rumor was that the staff would sabotage the lab by

682
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,000
Speaker 1: feeding the animals at night, and the behaviorists just basically

683
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 1: we're totally disgusted and threw their hands up. We're like

684
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: we can't do anything with this. It's fascinating. You won't

685
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 1: properly starve you know what. It reminds me of. Have

686
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,400
Speaker 1: you seen any of the current batch of the Planet

687
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: of the Apes movies? Oh? Yeah, I have, like the

688
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 1: first one with James Franco. I thought that movie was

689
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,799
Speaker 1: bad until all the human actors left and it just

690
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,400
Speaker 1: became about the apes. And once it was about the apes,

691
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: it was great. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of like them.

692
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the second one yet. I think I

693
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: think the third one is coming out soon. I don't

694
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: know the second one. I thought the second one was

695
00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 1: kind of good. Yeah, okay, well I need to check

696
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 1: it out. But that this is what was comping up

697
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: in my head as I was reading. I can't totally

698
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 1: vouch for scientific accuracy. Yeah I don't. We'll have to

699
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 1: ask what he thinks about it's a good ape storytelling.

700
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:12,800
Speaker 1: So all right, I'm gonna take us on a tangent

701
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: here for a second, because many of you may hear

702
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: behaviorism or operating conditioning and the first thing that pops

703
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 1: into your head is B. F. Skinner, because he's the

704
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,720
Speaker 1: guy we're all taught about in high school. Basic, basic,

705
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:29,319
Speaker 1: psychology usually involves some kind of Skinner research. Right. The

706
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:33,439
Speaker 1: Skinner was massively influential in twentieth century psychology. Now, I've

707
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:36,880
Speaker 1: got a weird example here about Skinner's thought process, but

708
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: it's also related to my own education. Okay, so you

709
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: were put in a box with electric shocks. Yes, but

710
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: that doesn't have anything to do with this. No. Uh.

711
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 1: I had heard this whole story from my psychology teacher

712
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:57,840
Speaker 1: in high school that Skinner put one of his children

713
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 1: in a Skinner box. Explaining this, hold on, you gotta

714
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: explain the concept of a Skinner box. I'm going to

715
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: I remember I remember being like really, like that's allowed,

716
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:11,399
Speaker 1: Like I couldn't believe it, And here it is and

717
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 1: it isn't and I'll explain why. So, but I'm using

718
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:16,800
Speaker 1: this as an example. It's a little bit of a diversion,

719
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: but it shows you the kind of thought processes that

720
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: Skinner had when he was testing. Okay, so uh, there's

721
00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 1: confusion about Skinner boxes. The ones we typically recognize are

722
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:31,879
Speaker 1: the metal boxes that he invented to test rats by

723
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 1: giving them rewards for training and operating conditioning in which

724
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 1: any behavior could be trained using variable reinforcement. Right, teaching

725
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:40,800
Speaker 1: a bear how to dance, teaching a fish how to

726
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:43,000
Speaker 1: play soccer, teaching a rat to you know, I don't

727
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:45,040
Speaker 1: know what they were doing, like pushing panels and stuff

728
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:49,920
Speaker 1: like that. Skinner also invented something called the air crib,

729
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:54,240
Speaker 1: which is also sometimes referred to as a skinner box

730
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: or a baby tender. It sound like a chicken tender clothes.

731
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: He put his daughter in it. It's true, he did

732
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:05,399
Speaker 1: put his daughter in this thing, but it was not

733
00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:08,840
Speaker 1: anything like what were we commonly think of as skinner boxes.

734
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:13,320
Speaker 1: So this is where my my high school teacher got confused. Uh.

735
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: It was a spacious compartment that was mounted on a

736
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 1: wheeled table, and it had a window in it and

737
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: temperature and air control, and you would put these babies

738
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 1: inside it and the baby could move freely around within

739
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: it while it's mother was within visual context. So say

740
00:41:28,560 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: like the mother needed to go cook in the kitchen

741
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,719
Speaker 1: or something like that, and she couldn't constantly, you know,

742
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:36,839
Speaker 1: be holding the baby while she was cooking. She put

743
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:40,719
Speaker 1: it inside the baby tender, wheel the baby tender over

744
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: near the kitchen and she'd cook and kind of keep

745
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 1: one eye on the baby. Uh. This was Skinner's like solution.

746
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:49,239
Speaker 1: It was specifically because his wife was like, they had

747
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: a second child, and his wife was like, oh my god,

748
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:54,440
Speaker 1: it's so difficult to do all these things for the

749
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: first year of the baby's life. Okay, so other people

750
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:02,759
Speaker 1: actually used this device. I think it was commercially available,

751
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 1: but it didn't really take off per se um. There

752
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 1: are a lot of critics of it though, and they

753
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: said that babies would be socially starved by being put

754
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:15,799
Speaker 1: in these boxes. Skinner himself argued, that's not true. The

755
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:19,000
Speaker 1: baby receives the same amount of attention, if not more,

756
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 1: inside of my baby tender slash aircrib. Wow. Yeah, So

757
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,680
Speaker 1: another trivia question about Skinner. Do you know Skinner wrote

758
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:32,160
Speaker 1: like a utopian novel. Yeah, it's called Walden too. I

759
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 1: didn't know about this in LA I have heard about

760
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:36,719
Speaker 1: that reading about this for the episode, and apparently it

761
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:40,319
Speaker 1: has been the inspiration for some real like planned communities,

762
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: something that Peter Teal would be into. I don't know

763
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: about him. But no, actually no, I think it is

764
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:50,239
Speaker 1: not a It's not a rapture libertarian right. Uh. No,

765
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:55,160
Speaker 1: it's more like utopia. It is more like a thing

766
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 1: where you have it's essentially I think behaviorism put into practice,

767
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 1: so it's like top down control of culture in a

768
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: way that is maximizing people's you know, good tendencies or

769
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't know that much about it,

770
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:11,600
Speaker 1: so I can't speak about it. But he did write

771
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 1: a utopian novel, and as people going to this planned

772
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: community is sort of like a novel of ideas and

773
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 1: people like debate about things. Well, he was certainly a

774
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:22,920
Speaker 1: renaissance man. I think we can say that about B. F.

775
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:27,440
Speaker 1: Skinner Um. But just to clarify, hear all these rumors

776
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 1: about him putting his daughter in a skinner box, They're

777
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:32,600
Speaker 1: not true. In fact, there were the rumors turned into

778
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 1: urban myths about him doing experiments on her and that

779
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 1: she eventually committed suicide because of her lack of social conditioning.

780
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:41,319
Speaker 1: None of that is true. She went on to lead

781
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: a life and lived in London, I believe, Um. But yeah,

782
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 1: I learned this in a p psych in high school.

783
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: You know, we we learned the basics of operat conditioning,

784
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:51,839
Speaker 1: and then my teacher just told us that story, like,

785
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,279
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he even put his kit inside a skinner box.

786
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: And I was like, anyways, uh, he's get back to devolved. Yeah,

787
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 1: let's come back from this diversion. That was me just

788
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 1: sort of showing you the methodology of behavioral thinking. Yeah,

789
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:09,120
Speaker 1: but so yeah, so we are. We're back to this

790
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 1: idea that the behaviorists, according to Daval, you know, he

791
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:14,960
Speaker 1: made this charge that they treated all animals kind of

792
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: the same. They didn't want to think about instincts so much.

793
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: They didn't want to think about what was natural for

794
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 1: this animal in their environment, and it was all just conditioning.

795
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:27,359
Speaker 1: You could apply the standing animal and that that's not

796
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:31,520
Speaker 1: what Dvol is down with, right, and he especially hates

797
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:34,359
Speaker 1: it to sort of the opposite side of this when

798
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 1: people use the term non human animals when they're doing

799
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: current research, and you're grinning. I think you know where

800
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 1: I'm going with this here at how stuff works when

801
00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:48,440
Speaker 1: we write scripts for videos or sometimes for podcasts, uh

802
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: talking about animal research. I don't know about you, but

803
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: some of our colleagues use the term non human animals.

804
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: I use the term and uh, man, do we get

805
00:44:57,239 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 1: negative feedback about that? Like in the comments and stuff.

806
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: People really get rubbed the wrong way? And apparently Devol

807
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 1: also hates it. But I think for different reasons. Yeah,

808
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 1: I mean the idea. When I mean I use that term,

809
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 1: I'm just using it to say, like animals other than humans.

810
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 1: I think. I think his problem with it is that

811
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 1: in some ways that it's used, it implies that it's like, well,

812
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:24,080
Speaker 1: there's humans and then there's all these other animals and

813
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,799
Speaker 1: they're all fundamentally different. I'm just trying to use it pragmatically.

814
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: When I use it, I think to say like research

815
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: on non human animals, meaning research on animals that aren't

816
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens. Yeah, I tend to agree. He says it

817
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 1: implies an absence of humanity within the animal kingdom, which

818
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:44,320
Speaker 1: he's you know, he firmly wants to ground ground us

819
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 1: in thinking of ourselves as being animals and being part

820
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: of the animal kingdom. Uh. And so this leads us

821
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:53,440
Speaker 1: to actually the naming of his other field, which we're

822
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,160
Speaker 1: gonna get into later. But he says, really, what we're

823
00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 1: talking about here now is evolutionary cognition, and this is

824
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:02,720
Speaker 1: where we look at the world from the animal's viewpoint

825
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: the velt so we can appreciate their intelligence. And this

826
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: is where he comes up with that rule for research

827
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 1: that I was telling you about. Earlier and probably would

828
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:16,080
Speaker 1: apply this as well to your criticism of articles that

829
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:19,240
Speaker 1: you read online or maybe on Facebook or something like that. Okay,

830
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:22,440
Speaker 1: so he calls it to know thy animal rule, and

831
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: he says, anyone who wishes to stress an alternative claim

832
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: about an animal's cognitive capacities either needs to familiarize him

833
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 1: or herself with the species in question or make a

834
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 1: genuine effort to back his or her counterclaim with data.

835
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:41,040
Speaker 1: And then he says, anyone who intends to conduct experiments

836
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:45,719
Speaker 1: on animal cognitions should first spend a couple thousand hours

837
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 1: observing the spontaneous behavior of the species in question. Now,

838
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 1: this is interesting because a lot of people would say, like,

839
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:53,400
Speaker 1: wait a minute, why do I need to study that?

840
00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: I mean, in many cases, what you'd want is somebody

841
00:46:56,160 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 1: who dispassionately observes an animal, uh with you know, with

842
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: as little baggage as possible, to just come in and

843
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: strictly observed behaviors in the test environment. And there's some

844
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 1: truth to that. I mean, you don't want to let

845
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:12,600
Speaker 1: your biases and your feelings about an animal guide what

846
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: kind of observations you make in a test. But at

847
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:20,719
Speaker 1: the same time, when you're designing a test of animal intelligence,

848
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:24,279
Speaker 1: if you don't totally understand that animal and how it

849
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:29,759
Speaker 1: naturally behaves, you're very likely overlooking something absolutely crucial that

850
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 1: could change the way your tests should work or how

851
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 1: to interpret your results. Going back to the bird example,

852
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: knowing that these birds live in such a high, out

853
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:43,720
Speaker 1: of reach places, why would they possibly care if another

854
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:47,640
Speaker 1: bird of the same species fell into their nest? Right? Yeah,

855
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:49,720
Speaker 1: And this is another theme that comes up, the idea

856
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:53,240
Speaker 1: of observing animals in their natural behaviors, in their natural

857
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 1: habitats um. This comes up I think in the the

858
00:47:57,320 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 1: idea of like, okay, so how should we do science

859
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:03,719
Speaker 1: respect to the idea of anecdotes? This is a disgust

860
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 1: a lot in the book. It's another conflict between two

861
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: different desiderata in in getting the best scientific view of

862
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 1: an animal. So one thing would be that we don't

863
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:18,239
Speaker 1: want to just have our scientific ideas about animals completely

864
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: informed by anecdotes where somebody says, hey, one time I

865
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: saw a chimpanzee, do x R right? Well, And that

866
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:27,440
Speaker 1: that's going back to our example from the beginning of

867
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 1: the episode. You and I have experienced anecdotal experiences with

868
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: our dogs right, but they're not under laboratory conditions, right,

869
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: So you have anecdotal experiences. But then again, on the

870
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: other side, you could have this mentality that says, well,

871
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:44,839
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in anecdotes about what animals have done

872
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:46,600
Speaker 1: in the wild. You know, you may have been observing

873
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 1: chimpanzees in the wild and you think you saw them

874
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: do something once that indicates a certain type of cognition.

875
00:48:52,440 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 1: You may have seen them do something that you think

876
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 1: indicates that they understand how other minds work, or something

877
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:00,799
Speaker 1: like that. But that's just a story you have that's

878
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 1: not like something that we have repeatedly tested. There's validity

879
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: to that point of view, but only to a certain extent.

880
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:11,839
Speaker 1: And duval Uh doesn't think that anecdotes should comprise our

881
00:49:11,840 --> 00:49:14,880
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge, but he does strongly think that they should

882
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: inspire our scientific exploration. Yeah, he sees value to them. Yeah,

883
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 1: So you start with an anecdote. You observe animals, for example,

884
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:26,320
Speaker 1: in their wild behavior, and you see one do something interesting,

885
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:30,960
Speaker 1: and that observation of one doing something unexpected or interesting

886
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:34,760
Speaker 1: forms the basis of a controlled test. You say, Okay,

887
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 1: now I wonder if we can isolate the variables here

888
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:39,640
Speaker 1: and get them to do the same thing. So let's

889
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: bring that around to one of my favorite lines in

890
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 1: the book. This is this is I laughed out loud

891
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 1: at this. Okay, he said, would anyone test the memory

892
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:53,040
Speaker 1: of human children by throwing them into a swimming pool

893
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 1: to see if they could remember where to get out?

894
00:49:56,719 --> 00:49:59,120
Speaker 1: And he's using this example because this is actually how

895
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:02,040
Speaker 1: many rats are t did with what is called Morris's

896
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:05,040
Speaker 1: water maze, right to see if the rats can figure

897
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:08,520
Speaker 1: it out? So would we? I mean I immediately was like,

898
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 1: this is like a perfect example of humor at work, right,

899
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 1: Like the idea of taking something as taboo is just

900
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:19,080
Speaker 1: throwing a child into a pool. But then it's it's

901
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 1: along the lines of, well, we're doing it for research, right,

902
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 1: and the babies somehow kind of figure out how to

903
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 1: climb out of the pool. It's the same kind of

904
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:30,279
Speaker 1: thing he says about the rats. Well, like, how many

905
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:33,319
Speaker 1: situations would these rats be in where they just get

906
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:35,880
Speaker 1: thrown into a pool? Let's see, I could think of

907
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: lots of scenes in movies where they're like surging currents

908
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:41,759
Speaker 1: of water with rats in them. Yeah, there's like one

909
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 1: in the Indiana Jones in the last crusade, there's like

910
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: a rat flood in there, and that's not really their

911
00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: natural habitat though. Right. Another thing he says to keep

912
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:54,839
Speaker 1: in mind about most labs, and I didn't know this,

913
00:50:56,120 --> 00:50:59,720
Speaker 1: is that most labs keep their test animals at eighty

914
00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:02,799
Speaker 1: five percent of their typical body weight. And this is

915
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: so that they'll be more motivated by food as a reward. Yeah,

916
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:08,920
Speaker 1: but this could also go the other way. I mean,

917
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:12,720
Speaker 1: it could also be causing problems for test results, because

918
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 1: what if animals don't behave the way they normally would

919
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: if they're hungry. Yeah. It was criticized by the well

920
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 1: known primatologist Harry Harlowe actually, and he argued that animals

921
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 1: learn from curiosity and free exploration. Uh, and that would

922
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 1: be stifled by making them fixated on food. Yeah. So,

923
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:36,439
Speaker 1: but basically, what we're looking at is a variation on intelligence.

924
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:40,280
Speaker 1: We're not looking at different topics of intelligence. So Duval

925
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:43,600
Speaker 1: argues that if we fail to find cognitive capacity in

926
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 1: a species, well there's something wrong in our approach as

927
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:50,879
Speaker 1: human beings, not with the actual species itself. Right, So,

928
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:55,399
Speaker 1: going back to the crab example, you know, uh, we

929
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 1: haven't come up with an approach yet to quite understand

930
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:01,319
Speaker 1: what's going on with the crabs that are ripping these

931
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: anemones apart and using them as a two handed weapons.

932
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:07,880
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what that approach would be.

933
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 1: I need to spend a couple of thousand hours with

934
00:52:10,040 --> 00:52:12,320
Speaker 1: these crabs before I could do that. I guess it

935
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:15,800
Speaker 1: could be. I mean, a way of testing what kind

936
00:52:15,840 --> 00:52:17,839
Speaker 1: of thing leads to this would be trying to put

937
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,319
Speaker 1: them in situations where they could, uh, where they could

938
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: create new advantages of tool use that might be similar

939
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:27,920
Speaker 1: but wouldn't necessarily play on the same instincts if it

940
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: is instinct driven uh. And then he says the challenge

941
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:37,560
Speaker 1: is to find tests that fit an animals temperament, their interests, anatomy,

942
00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 1: and sensory capacities. Faced with negative outcomes, we need to

943
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:46,319
Speaker 1: pay close attention to differences in motivation and attention. He's

944
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:48,840
Speaker 1: referring to the animals here. All right, we need to

945
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back there

946
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:59,359
Speaker 1: will be more on animal intelligence and cognition. Okay, So

947
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: count or to this behaviorist mode of thinking that has

948
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 1: really dominated our thought about animal intelligence for at least

949
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 1: a century or more. Uh, Duval talks about the discipline

950
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: of ethology. Yeah, ethology the study of animal behavior, but specifically, uh,

951
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:20,439
Speaker 1: sort of instinctual animal behavior that is common to all

952
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:23,240
Speaker 1: of the members of a species. Yeah. He he refers

953
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 1: to it as being about spontaneous behavior. So going back

954
00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: to our examples from the beginning, right, it's more instinctual. Um. So,

955
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:34,120
Speaker 1: I have a question for you and and maybe for

956
00:53:34,239 --> 00:53:38,279
Speaker 1: del I'm a little confused here. Did this spin out

957
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:42,719
Speaker 1: of evolutionary theory from Darwin? Uh? Well, yeah, I would

958
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 1: think so. I mean, it seemed like it, but I

959
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 1: couldn't draw a direct line. I mean, all all modern

960
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 1: biological theories are in some way rooted in in the

961
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:57,839
Speaker 1: modern synthesis of evolution. But you, I guess you could

962
00:53:57,840 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: say that this is very specifically base Ston thinking about

963
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,839
Speaker 1: how behaviors are evolved traits, because I guess with behaviorism

964
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:08,759
Speaker 1: you would say that the capacity to learn is an

965
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:11,280
Speaker 1: evolved trade. But that can just be applied to anything,

966
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:17,319
Speaker 1: because you know, evolutionary theory predicts cognitive similarities based on

967
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:20,799
Speaker 1: the relations between a species in their habitat. It sounds

968
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,719
Speaker 1: like velt to me. Uh So, okay, yeah, we're we're

969
00:54:24,760 --> 00:54:27,319
Speaker 1: shaped by our environments and so yeah, our behaviors are

970
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,799
Speaker 1: shaped by our environments. Well, ethology actually started in the

971
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, and that it was started by French researchers.

972
00:54:34,719 --> 00:54:37,399
Speaker 1: And they used the term ethos, which you've probably heard

973
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 1: me throw around on the show a lot because of

974
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 1: my background in rhetorical theory. But ethos is the Greek

975
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:48,640
Speaker 1: word for character, and they used that to describe species,

976
00:54:48,719 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: typical characteristics. Now, William Morton Wheeler is the guy who

977
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:56,719
Speaker 1: made it popular in English speaking study. This was in

978
00:54:56,840 --> 00:55:00,719
Speaker 1: nineteen o two and he called it a study habits

979
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:05,520
Speaker 1: and instincts. Uh. So ethology, you know, without diving too

980
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:07,520
Speaker 1: deep into this, well, it has its own language to

981
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:12,440
Speaker 1: talk about instincts, stereotypical behaviors, stimuli that illicit specific behaviors,

982
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:16,480
Speaker 1: et cetera, similar things to behaviorism. Now, the two people

983
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 1: that that Devol really mentions heavily in his book and

984
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:25,839
Speaker 1: I Gather are inspirations for his own work our Lorenz

985
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: and tin Berken, uh. And they were partners within this discipline.

986
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: They were actually separated by opposite sides during World War Two.

987
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 1: Just fascinating. One of them was like a medic for

988
00:55:38,920 --> 00:55:41,840
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany. And the other one was where was he

989
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. I don't think he was in the

990
00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:49,400
Speaker 1: Netherlands anyways. It is fascinating they knew each other before this,

991
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:51,839
Speaker 1: they were separated by the war, and then afterwards they

992
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:55,239
Speaker 1: got over their differences and worked together again. It's really fascinating.

993
00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:57,239
Speaker 1: He this is a great part of the book where

994
00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:00,200
Speaker 1: he just goes into this history between these two guys

995
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:03,400
Speaker 1: and kind of how they've inspired an entire generation of

996
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:09,920
Speaker 1: people who study animal intelligence. Yeah. Now, he says, mythologists

997
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 1: are usually zoologists, while behaviorists are usually psychologists. That makes

998
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:16,520
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me. I mean, if you're

999
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:19,840
Speaker 1: an athologist and you're trying to understand an animal's role

1000
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:23,400
Speaker 1: in its environment, you're thinking about the animal itself and

1001
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:28,359
Speaker 1: how that informs potential behavior, and thinking if you're if

1002
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:32,360
Speaker 1: you are a behaviorist, like the animal is almost incidental.

1003
00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 1: You're just thinking about the animal is a substrate for behavior,

1004
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:40,319
Speaker 1: and any animal really could be a substrate for behavior.

1005
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 1: And I wonder if, uh, you know, as we're moving

1006
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:46,799
Speaker 1: along towards a sort of chronological history of this of

1007
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:50,759
Speaker 1: this discipline, if as they're coming together more, if we're

1008
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:54,120
Speaker 1: seeing a blend of zoology and psychology. You know, yeah,

1009
00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:57,080
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean this division, as you'll, as

1010
00:56:57,200 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 1: ud All talks about in the book, is it's less

1011
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:02,960
Speaker 1: of a division today, it's more of a synthesis. So

1012
00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:07,439
Speaker 1: both ethology and behaviorism were actually a reaction to what

1013
00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:12,040
Speaker 1: we're folk explanation of animals, right, just kind of I

1014
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:15,560
Speaker 1: guess what we would call urban myths today, right, or

1015
00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:18,000
Speaker 1: even people who you know might have been thought of

1016
00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:20,720
Speaker 1: as scientists of the time, but we're sort of being

1017
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 1: scientists by anecdote, like not super rigorous scientists saying like

1018
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:28,240
Speaker 1: I once saw you know, bird do this, This is

1019
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 1: what birds can do well. Actually he gives a very

1020
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:33,880
Speaker 1: good example of this. Uh. And he blames it all

1021
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: on the guy who followed Darwin, who Darwin chose to

1022
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:41,600
Speaker 1: be like his successor in this theory of evolution. Uh.

1023
00:57:41,800 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: A lot of misinformation came out of scientific anecdotes, like

1024
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:47,720
Speaker 1: you're talking about. The guy's name was George Romanez. I

1025
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:49,840
Speaker 1: believe it is how you pronounce it, uh, And he

1026
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:51,920
Speaker 1: was a perpetrator of this. Here are two things that

1027
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:56,080
Speaker 1: he said. He said that rats would form supply lines

1028
00:57:56,640 --> 00:58:00,320
Speaker 1: to hand down stolen eggs from like a you know,

1029
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 1: either like a farm or like just a chicken's nest,

1030
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:06,920
Speaker 1: that they would pass these eggs down to their holes.

1031
00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:09,360
Speaker 1: This sounds like a Disney cartoon to me, like the

1032
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:13,240
Speaker 1: idea of them, like they're in a little like assembly line, right,

1033
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:15,160
Speaker 1: and they're just passing the egg back and forth, singing

1034
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:17,720
Speaker 1: a song or something. Uh. And then the other one,

1035
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:21,960
Speaker 1: this one's nuts. Uh. He told the story about a

1036
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:25,200
Speaker 1: monkey that was hit by a hunter's bullet and then

1037
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,880
Speaker 1: the monkey smeared the blood on its hand and held

1038
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:31,680
Speaker 1: that hand, the bloody hand, up to the hunter to

1039
00:58:31,840 --> 00:58:35,880
Speaker 1: make the hunter feel guilty. Now, even as somebody who

1040
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:40,240
Speaker 1: is uh sympathetic to the idea of complex animal cognition,

1041
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:42,919
Speaker 1: that seems like a stretch. How do you know, even

1042
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:45,640
Speaker 1: if that's really what happened, how do you know the

1043
00:58:45,680 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 1: ape was trying to make the hunter feel guilty. That

1044
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:53,360
Speaker 1: seems a little crazy, right, yeah? Um So. Ramanez subsequently

1045
00:58:53,440 --> 00:58:56,880
Speaker 1: led to a guy named Lloyd Morgan, and Morgan had

1046
00:58:56,920 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 1: an interpretation that animals are mainly stimulus response machine. So

1047
00:59:00,600 --> 00:59:05,240
Speaker 1: that's basically how we got to that behaviorist thinking. Because

1048
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 1: of this this one guy who kind of just went

1049
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:11,400
Speaker 1: rogue and then there was a response within the discipline

1050
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 1: to him. Another example is a great story and I

1051
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:17,800
Speaker 1: had heard this story before reading the book, but it's

1052
00:59:17,800 --> 00:59:21,360
Speaker 1: a wonderful story. The story of Clever Hans. Right, the horse,

1053
00:59:21,400 --> 00:59:24,080
Speaker 1: Clever Hans who could do he was a math genius.

1054
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:27,560
Speaker 1: Yes to the idea here was that apparently Hans would

1055
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:32,920
Speaker 1: literally be trotted out to crowds and his owner would

1056
00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:36,439
Speaker 1: ask it to perform math problems and it would get

1057
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:40,080
Speaker 1: that the answer right, every clumpets hoof, I think that's

1058
00:59:40,080 --> 00:59:42,880
Speaker 1: how to count off a number. That would be the answer,

1059
00:59:43,200 --> 00:59:46,439
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, Wow, this horse, it's got an amazing brain.

1060
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 1: It can do square roots. Can a horse do that? Yeah? Exactly.

1061
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:53,760
Speaker 1: And they figured out that it was actually through conditioning

1062
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:57,560
Speaker 1: right that the horse was probably What they think happened

1063
00:59:57,600 --> 01:00:01,160
Speaker 1: was the horse was responding to cue from its owner,

1064
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:04,200
Speaker 1: so it would start clamping a number, and then the

1065
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 1: when owner got to the when it got to the

1066
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:08,880
Speaker 1: right one, he would be like ah, yes, yeah. The

1067
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: owner would show like either positive body language or I

1068
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 1: think he They said something about a hat with a

1069
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:17,200
Speaker 1: big brim. Yes, he would. He had a hat with

1070
01:00:17,240 --> 01:00:19,200
Speaker 1: a brim that he would be looking down at the

1071
01:00:19,200 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 1: horse's hoof while the hoof was tapping, and then when

1072
01:00:21,880 --> 01:00:24,160
Speaker 1: it got to the right number, he would stop looking

1073
01:00:24,160 --> 01:00:26,600
Speaker 1: at the hoof and lift his head up, so the

1074
01:00:26,600 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 1: horse would subsequently stop. That was what was going on,

1075
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 1: basically to the point where when this was revealed, it

1076
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:34,640
Speaker 1: wasn't like the owner was duplicitous and like trying to

1077
01:00:34,680 --> 01:00:38,200
Speaker 1: trick everybody. He himself thought that this horse was able

1078
01:00:38,240 --> 01:00:40,640
Speaker 1: to do this. Yeah, and but this serves as a

1079
01:00:40,680 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 1: great cautionary tale about about these kind of anecdotes where

1080
01:00:44,800 --> 01:00:47,800
Speaker 1: we attribute to were too credulous. We attribute too much

1081
01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:53,560
Speaker 1: cognition too readily to animals without being scientifically rigorous. This

1082
01:00:53,680 --> 01:00:57,520
Speaker 1: actually led us to using blind studies with animals because

1083
01:00:57,560 --> 01:01:01,600
Speaker 1: they because of the whole Clever Hans incident, Duvall actually argues,

1084
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:04,640
Speaker 1: he says, you know, it's interesting, though we don't do

1085
01:01:04,720 --> 01:01:07,320
Speaker 1: the same thing when we test the cognition of human children.

1086
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:09,560
Speaker 1: Though there's a whole section about this in the book,

1087
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 1: uh Improper analogies between they're all these tests that try

1088
01:01:13,680 --> 01:01:16,120
Speaker 1: to say, oh, is a chimpanzee smarter than a three

1089
01:01:16,200 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 1: year old child? Is a chimpanzee smarter than a five

1090
01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:22,960
Speaker 1: year old child in different domains of knowledge. Um, but

1091
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:26,920
Speaker 1: a very common problem with this is that the chimpanzee

1092
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:29,160
Speaker 1: and the child, the human child are just not on

1093
01:01:29,200 --> 01:01:32,880
Speaker 1: an equal playing field in terms of test environments. Children

1094
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:36,080
Speaker 1: are surrounded by members of their own species. They're probably

1095
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:38,960
Speaker 1: much more at ease and comfortable, maybe with their parents

1096
01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:42,120
Speaker 1: in the room. Uh, They're just all kinds of ways

1097
01:01:42,160 --> 01:01:46,400
Speaker 1: in which these testing scenarios are not equivalent, and yet

1098
01:01:46,440 --> 01:01:49,000
Speaker 1: they're the results are being treated as if they're done

1099
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:51,840
Speaker 1: across an even playing field. Like his example is in

1100
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:54,480
Speaker 1: the same way that we wouldn't have clever Hans being

1101
01:01:54,560 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 1: a room with his owner and his brimmed hat, we

1102
01:01:57,440 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 1: shouldn't necessarily have these children being this ame room as

1103
01:02:00,520 --> 01:02:02,880
Speaker 1: their mother's, Like they're literally testing these children while they're

1104
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:05,640
Speaker 1: in their mother's laps. So it's interesting he points out

1105
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: the contradiction there. Now these two schools finally come together,

1106
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:13,640
Speaker 1: and I think this is where we're gonna cap off

1107
01:02:13,640 --> 01:02:18,440
Speaker 1: this episode. But basically, behaviorists and mythologists started working together

1108
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:22,040
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three, and this is when Daniel Lerman

1109
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 1: and Tim berg and started a friendship and it started

1110
01:02:26,160 --> 01:02:30,520
Speaker 1: ongoing criticism not of each other's camps, but within each

1111
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:33,919
Speaker 1: camp of its own tenants, and I think each each

1112
01:02:34,000 --> 01:02:37,360
Speaker 1: camp obviously had legitimate things to say about the other one, right,

1113
01:02:37,440 --> 01:02:39,480
Speaker 1: I mean today, if you would try to if you

1114
01:02:39,760 --> 01:02:42,320
Speaker 1: try to be a chauvinist about you know, it's it's

1115
01:02:42,320 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 1: all instinct or it's all learned behavior. I mean, I

1116
01:02:44,920 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 1: think either of those positions is silly today. I mean,

1117
01:02:47,240 --> 01:02:52,400
Speaker 1: obviously animal behaviors or combinations of instincts and learned behaviors.

1118
01:02:52,440 --> 01:02:54,360
Speaker 1: As we outlined at the beginning, it's like saying that

1119
01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:57,120
Speaker 1: it's only nature, it's only nurture. Try to use a

1120
01:02:57,120 --> 01:02:59,960
Speaker 1: little bit of both, right. But then also this lead

1121
01:03:00,080 --> 01:03:02,439
Speaker 1: is the question, even even if you're you're talking about

1122
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:05,400
Speaker 1: an acknowledgement of the influence of both these things, there

1123
01:03:05,480 --> 01:03:08,600
Speaker 1: is still the question, what's the role of complex cognition,

1124
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 1: what's the role of thinking? Well, let's get to that

1125
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:17,280
Speaker 1: in our next episode. We've basically covered the gamut of

1126
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:21,240
Speaker 1: where the discipline of looking at animal intelligence was, but

1127
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:24,640
Speaker 1: we're gonna look forward in another episode to talking about

1128
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:28,440
Speaker 1: where it is and where it's going. Now, my question

1129
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:30,840
Speaker 1: for you out there you're listening to this, maybe you

1130
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:34,840
Speaker 1: have pets, maybe you've interacted with animals and various capacities cows.

1131
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:37,080
Speaker 1: Maybe we had a lot of people right into us

1132
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:39,960
Speaker 1: recently about our butter episode with the cow with the

1133
01:03:39,960 --> 01:03:42,480
Speaker 1: window in it. Yeah, exactly, the cow with the window

1134
01:03:42,480 --> 01:03:44,440
Speaker 1: in it, because I mentioned that in the episode and

1135
01:03:44,480 --> 01:03:46,640
Speaker 1: a lot of people had worked with them before. So

1136
01:03:47,160 --> 01:03:51,439
Speaker 1: have you seen, uh, your own versions of this play

1137
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:54,000
Speaker 1: out with animals? Have you seen what you think of

1138
01:03:54,040 --> 01:03:57,160
Speaker 1: as only instinctual responses with these animals, or maybe have

1139
01:03:57,240 --> 01:04:00,880
Speaker 1: you seen examples of them learning from conditioning, like giving

1140
01:04:00,920 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 1: them treats, for instance, to make your dogs sit down,

1141
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:05,439
Speaker 1: which is something I'm working on with my dogs right now.

1142
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:08,120
Speaker 1: Let us know, there's a lot of different ways to

1143
01:04:08,120 --> 01:04:10,360
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. We're on social media all

1144
01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:13,680
Speaker 1: over the place. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler.

1145
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:16,760
Speaker 1: We are also on Instagram, although I don't know that

1146
01:04:16,760 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: that's the best way to ask questions. But you can

1147
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:22,640
Speaker 1: look at very pretty pictures of us, uh and what

1148
01:04:22,680 --> 01:04:24,720
Speaker 1: about stuff to blow your mind? Dot com? Well, of

1149
01:04:24,760 --> 01:04:29,240
Speaker 1: course that's our website where you can find blog posts, articles, videos,

1150
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:33,080
Speaker 1: other past podcasts, and our vast archive with some more

1151
01:04:33,120 --> 01:04:36,320
Speaker 1: pretty pictures. Probably, Yeah, there are lots of pretty pictures.

1152
01:04:36,440 --> 01:04:38,560
Speaker 1: You know what, Robert Lamb isn't in the room with

1153
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:40,640
Speaker 1: us right now, so let's just honor him by saying,

1154
01:04:41,120 --> 01:04:44,960
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb has a singular talent for finding the best

1155
01:04:45,080 --> 01:04:48,440
Speaker 1: possible image to go along with the podcast episode. I

1156
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 1: am yeah, he's so good at it. I'm always surprised

1157
01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:55,800
Speaker 1: at the images that he's able to pull together. But

1158
01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:58,920
Speaker 1: of course, also you can always email us if you

1159
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:00,760
Speaker 1: want to let us now feedback on this episode or

1160
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:03,080
Speaker 1: any other, or to give us ideas for future episodes

1161
01:05:03,080 --> 01:05:15,000
Speaker 1: that blow the mind at how stuff Works dot com

1162
01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 1: for more illness and thousands of other topics. Is it

1163
01:05:17,600 --> 01:05:30,400
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com by Believe the bo