Do Animals Think?

I wrote the letter (below) in reply to Marc Bekoff's American Scientist (AS) review of Clive Wynne's very informative and well written book. Professor Bekoff was given an opportunity by the editors of AS to reply to my letter but he declined. Let me just add a few additional comments evoked by Bekoff's comments on this site. Bekoff writes that "Many observations show that members of some species imitate other animals, empathize with them, are able to take another's perspective in certain situations (there is neurobiological evidence to support the conclusion that some animals have a theory of mind), and have culture and rather sophisticated patterns of communication." But by using words like "empathize," and, I would argue, even "think," Bekoff implies that when nonhumans do something that we describe as "empathizing" (or "thinking"), it is the same as when we use the word to describe human behavior. But that is a mistake. Without operationally defining such words each time we use them, we run the risk of confusing behaviors that most likely have different functions, even if they appear to have similar forms. And nonhumans cannot have a "theory of mind" because all the evidence for theory of mind is linguistic. Bekoff is also wrong that, "The behaviorist view is little concerned with evolution. It also fails to recognize that the behavior of many animals is far too flexible and situationspecific to be explained in terms of simplified stimulusresponse contingencies. Marked withinspecies variability is quite common, and this adaptive variability often (although not always) lends itself readily to "cognitive" explanations invoking consciousness, intentions and beliefs." All behaviorists that I know (and I know quite a few), including me, are all thoroughgoing Darwinians. We recognize the contribution of natural selction to the behavior of organisms, but, as Bekoff notes, we also recognize the flexibility or adaptiveness of behavior. Bekoff is correct that such flexibility cannot be explained by "simplified stimulus-response contingencies," but who, since John Watson, has tried to do that? That doesn't mean that the principles of operant learning (the science of adaptive behavior within the lifetime of an organism) aren't sufficient to explain the behavior. In fact, "explanations invoking consciousness, intentions and beliefs" are not only not sufficient, they are not parsimonious, invoking as they do unobservable, undefinable, and unmeasurable processes. Such concepts are simply not necessary to explain the behavior of human beings much less other animals. Bekoff critizes Wynn for not providing any scientific support for his reductionistic explanations, but the scientific support is in the almost one hundred years of accumulated empirical research on animal (and human) learning. From there, any interpretation based on the principles derived from that research is more parsimonious that the made-up explanations involving cognitive structures and

This is an extremely well written book. Wynne has an exceptionally clear style and the book is full of wit and humour. At the same time, Wynne has a very good grasp of these complex issues. On the one hand, he explains quite beautifully which impressive perceptual and cognitive capabilities different animal species have. On the other hand, the author demonstrates very clearly that there really is a gap between humans and other animals, and that the latter simply do not possess language, self-consciousness or theory of mind. Most of the prevailing myths about animal cognition are dispelled in this book. That is what makes this such an important volume, as most of the popular books on the minds of animals seem to want to perpetuate these myths. Rather than dishing out just so stories about the evolution of cognition, or coming up with fashionable manifestos on the future of mankind, Wynne is sticking to the facts and provides a thorough analysis of extant data. This impressive book is a badly needed breath of fresh air in a subject area that is dominated by woolly idealism. I recommend it strongly.

With our tendency to anthropomorphize everything, from playful puppies to temperamental automobiles, it stands to reason that the animal mind is a topic of hot debate.Literally. Animal rights activists have torched and bombed facilities associated with medical research or product testing on animals. Wynne finds these zealots baffling. Why, he wonders, focus on researchers rather than farmers, who, for sheer numbers, do away with a lot more animals? The Animal Liberation Front, he notes, in 2001 documented "the rescue of 5,000 animals, not one of them a pig. Why not?"People simply do not bring an objective eye to bear on the subject of animal minds and that includes scientists. In lively and provocative style, Wynne, psychologist and professor, attempts to remedy this. He devotes chapters to four well-studied species: the honeybee, the pigeon, the bat and the dolphin. Others, particularly apes, also make frequent appearances. He examines what makes these animals different from us, and what we have in common. What is special about these creatures? What is it like to be them? Are animals self-aware? How can we know? Chapters are devoted to the faculties that - supposedly - set us apart and above the animal kingdom: reasoning, language, and "the ability to put oneself imaginatively into the position of another - what we would call `theory of mind.' "No one argues for the intelligence of bees. Yet the dance of the honeybee conveys detailed information about the whereabouts of high-quality food. The bee knows her food is better than what her sisters are bringing in because unloader bees serve her quickly. Mediocre loads have to wait. But some bees, even when informed their offering is hardly worth unloading, do their dance anyway. They are able to reason that near and plentiful is worthwhile even if the quality is below average. Most, perhaps all, animals learn from experience. Even the sea slug learns to anticipate a poke. But reasoning was thought to be the province of humans until monkeys were shown to do it in the 1980s. A few years later even pigeons demonstrated the ability to make fairly complex deductions.But then, a setback. Monkeys who could negotiate complicated patterns to predict the next in a series, were unable to judge where a peanut would fall through a curved tube. Although the simple mechanism was right in front of them, they still assumed the peanut would fall in a straight line. Wynne deconstructs these experiments to show how the simple logic involved for the animal in each step contributes to a complex task, while what seems to us the simplest diversion of a curve could stymie another primate, unable to make the leap.The language discussion naturally devotes a lot of its energy to ape studies, which seem to show that apes can learn to use sign or symbol language. Wynne debunks this by giving us chunks of original data alongside the researcher's conclusions, showing a clear bias for enthusiasm. Readers of the popular books he refe