When you say “Clever Hans” are you talking specifically about the handler’s subconscious cues determining what the dog does?
I’m thinking of it more as a variation on that idea. I think it’s possible that in the button case, the buttons could be stand ins for cues from an owner. Simply training with the buttons over time would modify a dogs behavior based solely on the presence or absence of the button. Work the toys in, and you’re simply training a dog to respond ‘correctly’ or ‘incorrectly’ in the presence or absence of a ‘thing’ associated with a particular sound and visual cue.
I think of lion tamers and other animals who have been trained to do tricks, like unicycling bears, and dolphins and orcas that are trained to jump through hoops when I see these types of things. Circuses things. It would be cool if dogs really could understand human language to the point where they could communicate back, but I just don’t believe it’s the case. Our brains developed complex areas devoted specifically to making and decoding speech, which depend on specific structures of our throats. These are all things all animals except for humans lack.
I agree that on the continuum animals are much further towards reflexive, but I just want to point out that most people inhabit reflexive states very often.
I sometimes think modern life is just learning to inhibit our reflexive actions, which are based on our reflexive states. We do this inhibiting not only because of social training (like dog training or obedience school, what to do, not why to do it), but also because of our reflective ability (why or why not to do it), which allows us to (theoretically) do things like putting off getting rewards now for more rewards in the future, or to develop interpersonal relationship skills to try to work with people we reflexively dislike.
These are things dogs can’t do, as they involve ability to think abstractly about concepts like time and etiquette. Dogs can be trained to inhibit their reflexive behavior, and ‘act’ a particular way (don’t bite, don’t bark, come to me when I make particular sound or give a particular gesture, or press this button when they hear a particular sound) but not to reflect on why it’s important to do so.
If they can be taught to reflect like this, I have some doggy pipes and smoking jackets with a monocle and leather reading chair made specifically for dogs to be able to sit and read the paper (after they fetch it) to sell you. :)
I’m thinking of it more as a variation on that idea. I think it’s possible that in the button case, the buttons could be stand ins for cues from an owner. Simply training with the buttons over time would modify a dogs behavior based solely on the presence or absence of the button. Work the toys in, and you’re simply training a dog to respond ‘correctly’ or ‘incorrectly’ in the presence or absence of a ‘thing’ associated with a particular sound and visual cue.
I think of lion tamers and other animals who have been trained to do tricks, like unicycling bears, and dolphins and orcas that are trained to jump through hoops when I see these types of things. Circuses things. It would be cool if dogs really could understand human language to the point where they could communicate back, but I just don’t believe it’s the case. Our brains developed complex areas devoted specifically to making and decoding speech, which depend on specific structures of our throats. These are all things all animals except for humans lack.
I sometimes think modern life is just learning to inhibit our reflexive actions, which are based on our reflexive states. We do this inhibiting not only because of social training (like dog training or obedience school, what to do, not why to do it), but also because of our reflective ability (why or why not to do it), which allows us to (theoretically) do things like putting off getting rewards now for more rewards in the future, or to develop interpersonal relationship skills to try to work with people we reflexively dislike.
These are things dogs can’t do, as they involve ability to think abstractly about concepts like time and etiquette. Dogs can be trained to inhibit their reflexive behavior, and ‘act’ a particular way (don’t bite, don’t bark, come to me when I make particular sound or give a particular gesture, or press this button when they hear a particular sound) but not to reflect on why it’s important to do so.
If they can be taught to reflect like this, I have some doggy pipes and smoking jackets with a monocle and leather reading chair made specifically for dogs to be able to sit and read the paper (after they fetch it) to sell you. :)