Baboons And Pigeons Are Capable Of Higher-level Cognition, Behavioral Studies Show

[SedesDomi]

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2009) — It’s safe to say that humans are smarter than animals, but a University of Iowa researcher is investigating the extent of that disparity in intelligence.
And, it may not be as great a gap as you suspect, according to UI psychologist Ed Wasserman, who presents his findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting February 12 in Chicago.

One cognitive capacity that is vital to human intelligence is the ability to determine whether two or more items are the same or different - a skill the famous American psychologist William James called the very “backbone” of our thinking. If you have two pennies in your left hand and a nickel and a dime in your right hand, then you can correctly report that the two coins in your left hand are the “same” and that the two coins in your right hand are “different.” You can also make similar judgments with any collection of items.

Wasserman’s research shows that baboons and pigeons can do that, too. A recent study by Wasserman and UI graduate student Dan Brooks found that both pigeons and people can learn same-different discriminations with visual stimuli that never repeat from trial to trial, thus proving that simple memorization cannot explain this cognitive feat.

Do experiments like the above have any implications for the subject of animal “souls”?

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Do experiments like the above have any implications for the subject of animal “souls”?

Such findings would not have surprised the Classical philosophers - many of them go quite a long way in allowing for some forms of intelligence in animals. The tendency tobelittle this did not really set in until St. Augustine got to work, but it was Descartes who come up with the horrible idea that they were mere machines ​

See:

• Richard Sorabji
  and
• Animal Minds and Human Morals
  and also
• media.www.vermontcynic.com/media/storage/paper308/news/2008/11/11/Opinion/Animal.Minds.Human.Morals-3535272.shtml

 

[Ghosty]

St. Thomas Aquinas himself discusses the ability of animals to discern and compare, so this finding really has no bearing on the difference between animal and rational souls. What the tests would have to demonstrate, in order to shake classic theological/philosophical suppositions, is that the animals are not just distinguishing between sensibly similar things (two pennies vs. two dimes, for example), but that they also have an abstract conception of the meaning “penny” and the meaning “dime”.

Sensory comparisons and classifications (round to round, square to square, ect) are critical to basic animal life in general, so these studies actually tell us less than we already knew, IMO.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Dameedna]

The studies of animal self-awarness are much more interesting.

As are those that show animals can be jealous, they can have a sense of justice(right and wrong consequence), that they can be grateful and thankful and that they can feel empathy.

Since we don’t really understand our own cognative abilities, it is difficult to determine when we can consider ourselves “better”.

In reality, there’s probably not as much of a difference in our instincts. We just really don’t know what makes us, US yet when compared to other animals.

Cheers

 

[Ridgerunner]

When one of these people get a pigeon or baboon to write a symphony, or even a mediocre play, I will really be impressed. Until then, not so much.

 

[SedesDomi]

When one of these people get a pigeon or baboon to write a symphony, or even a mediocre play, I will really be impressed. Until then, not so much.

So, one must write a mediocre play, before one can be human?

 

[Ghosty]

The studies of animal self-awarness are much more interesting.

As are those that show animals can be jealous, they can have a sense of justice(right and wrong consequence), that they can be grateful and thankful and that they can feel empathy.

Since we don’t really understand our own cognative abilities, it is difficult to determine when we can consider ourselves “better”.

In reality, there’s probably not as much of a difference in our instincts. We just really don’t know what makes us, US yet when compared to other animals.

Cheers

All of those things (except “right and wrong”) fall into the classic category of the “animal” or “sensitive” soul. They are not properties of the rational soul, or rather they’re not properties solely of the rational soul (which itself is “built up” from the sensitive soul).

As for “right and wrong”, such studies only show that animals can determine “good” and “bad” consequences, which is quite different from “right and wrong”. They can attack those that do bad things, or that create situations which are bad, but that’s not the same as justice, which implies an abstract set of principles beyond “that did something good, that was something bad”.

Again, the rational soul is about concepts, not about emotional responses. Even Medieval theologians applied “emotions” to the “animal part of the soul”.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

When one of these people get a pigeon or baboon to write a symphony, or even a mediocre play, I will really be impressed. Until then, not so much.

Writing a play may be a sign of savagery… If Plato had been a horse, we might be reading about the Ideal Philosopher-Horse in the Ideal Stable. Jockeys, stable-lads & other humans would then be of no great importance, & equine philosophy might revolve around the question of where oats & sugar-lumps come from - if they are not an illusion. If ever they heard of fish, horses might have no way of finding out whether such beings live in water - fish might be so great a mystery to horses, as to be to them what God is to men. So a horse who from his experience realised that fish were man-food (among other things) might be convicted of blasphemy, & have to drink hemlock, like Socrates. The horse-Socrates would be in the right even so.​

Why should we suppose humans are the most civilised of beings ? Surely, only because we are not horses, crickets, salmon, or eagles - each of which, if given to philosophical consideration, might be inclined to suppose themselves to be the foremost of animals. Men cannot run at 75 m.p.h., whereas cheetahs can: a symphony might not be much use to a cheetah. A heaven for cheetahs & a hell for men, & horses, might be very easy to arrange.