Other minds ...
A simple theory ... IF a creature with the brain the size of a bird can accomplish a certain task THEN it doesn't take human level computational capacity to perform that task.
Thomas Bugnyar, working in the field of animal cognition, has discovered that even ravens have some sense of "other minds" ... something thought to be in the nature of only the intelligent apes. [Yes, dogs have shown the trait too, but this has been written off as piggy-backing somehow on their advanced social learning and as not the same thing humans do ... "not so fast", maybe.]
Anyway ... Bugnyar's ravens were given canisters with cheese bit prizes inside. Apparently the ravens can see inside to know if there is a cheese bit.
Only the smartest ravens could open the canisters.
One particular smart raven was having a problem, he was getting pushed aside when he opened opened the container before he got any cheese. The big dumb bully ravens were getting all the rewards.
So ... this doubly smart raven started the habit of opening empty canisters and pretending to pick at some cheese. When the bully ravens came over and pushed him away he quickly slipped off to a cheese containing canister, opened it, and ate the cheese while the big dumb ravens will still staring into and pecking around in the empty canister.
One does not want to attribute a human like thought process to the doubly smart raven, but it seems obvious enough that this case (and ones like it) demonstrate the the rudimentary cognitive capacities for such "human thought processes" are availble quite a ways down the "great chain of being". Surely we add a lot with our big newer brains to this skill, but the basic trick is there in old "small" brains.
Daniel Dennett, from Tufts University, has the theory that most of the "complexity" in human cognitive activity stems from our research looking for "big tricks" that account for how we do things ... when the case is probably that often it is a combination of a bunch of little tricks that actually do the work.
The raven's capacity to have some concept that the other ravens have a perspective of him, and the further capacity to manipulate that perspective for his own advantage, are a couple of those small pieces of the puzzle.
Thomas Bugnyar, working in the field of animal cognition, has discovered that even ravens have some sense of "other minds" ... something thought to be in the nature of only the intelligent apes. [Yes, dogs have shown the trait too, but this has been written off as piggy-backing somehow on their advanced social learning and as not the same thing humans do ... "not so fast", maybe.]
Anyway ... Bugnyar's ravens were given canisters with cheese bit prizes inside. Apparently the ravens can see inside to know if there is a cheese bit.
Only the smartest ravens could open the canisters.
One particular smart raven was having a problem, he was getting pushed aside when he opened opened the container before he got any cheese. The big dumb bully ravens were getting all the rewards.
So ... this doubly smart raven started the habit of opening empty canisters and pretending to pick at some cheese. When the bully ravens came over and pushed him away he quickly slipped off to a cheese containing canister, opened it, and ate the cheese while the big dumb ravens will still staring into and pecking around in the empty canister.
One does not want to attribute a human like thought process to the doubly smart raven, but it seems obvious enough that this case (and ones like it) demonstrate the the rudimentary cognitive capacities for such "human thought processes" are availble quite a ways down the "great chain of being". Surely we add a lot with our big newer brains to this skill, but the basic trick is there in old "small" brains.
Daniel Dennett, from Tufts University, has the theory that most of the "complexity" in human cognitive activity stems from our research looking for "big tricks" that account for how we do things ... when the case is probably that often it is a combination of a bunch of little tricks that actually do the work.
The raven's capacity to have some concept that the other ravens have a perspective of him, and the further capacity to manipulate that perspective for his own advantage, are a couple of those small pieces of the puzzle.
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 12:02 PM
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