[ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness

[spike]

>… On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
Subject: Re: [ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness

 

William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> , 20/5/2014 12:30 AM:

In Michio Kaku's book, The Future of the Mind, there is a puzzle (page 303) that makes no sense to me.  Plutarch and Pliny have written about it, Montaigne, John Locke, George Berkeley, and Aquinas have opined about it and no one is happy with any solution to whether the dog can think/abstract.  Here it is:

There are three roads and the dog's master has gone down one of them.  The dog sniffs along two of them, finding no scent of his master, and so, without sniffing (!), takes the third.  Did he think?

…

 

Here’s an interesting experiment with dogs.  First get a dog that really likes you and wants to be with you.  Next, find a fenced area with gates at either end.  Walk in one gate, leaving the gate open where the dog can see it is open.  Walk to the other gate, go thru it without letting the dog follow.  Now walk away from the fenced area while calling the dog.

 

I have done this experiment with mixed results.  One of my dogs ran back away from me thru the open gate and ran around the fenced area, quickly caught up to me.  Another of my dogs had his redeeming qualities, a lovable character, but he was no rocket scientist.  He would just stand there barking his head off, hoping I would come back and let him thru the gate.  The one dog understood how we got down to where we were, the other didn’t.

 

This is a transhumanist list, but humanity will likely simulate simple brains before we manage to sim complex ones.  So transdogism will likely be a useful tool in the transhumanism movement.  So, I declare all dog experiments as fair game for posting here.  If you see examples of your dog reasoning or failing spectacularly to reason, do post it please.

 

spike

 

 

 

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