I saw an ad today for help for people with dissociative identity disorder (or multiple personality disorder). It said,
"If you have multiple personality disorder, you are not alone."
I saw a billboard at the side of the road a few days ago that said:
"If you lived here, you just missed your exit."
(Not as good as the, "if you lived in your car. . .")
None of the statements in this post is true.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Dennett and Animal Minds
Daniel Dennett claims (in conversation and I think in his book Kinds of Minds) that a necessary condition for moral agency was having an ability to represent to oneself rules governing how one or others should behave. He further claims that humans are the only animals that can do this. Thus, only humans can be moral agents.
I think you can make a case that representing rules to oneself is not necessary. Maybe humans don't represent rules to themselves either. I something think about the consequences of my actions, but I don't know that I represent rules to myself very often. Still, I'd like to think I'm a moral agent even when I don't do that. Anyway, that's not the point of this little post. I have an example that looks to show that some animals besides humans can represent to themselves rules governing how they should behave.
Here's some background information relevant to the story. Dogs have a dominance hierarchy. They behave in various ways that either establish the hierarchy, enforce it or show what the hierarchy is. One of these behaviors I call the game of chicken. The way our German Shepherds play chicken is that one of dog will charge headlong at the other dog from one side and he/she either swerves at the last moment or the other dog dodges out of the way. I'm not sure whether they do this to establish dominance or to show that dominance once it has been established in some other way. But the rule is fairly simple: the submissive dog gives way to the dominant dog.
Of course, the fact that the dogs follow this rule does not mean that they represent that rule to themselves. Even a rock can follow a rule without representing it. However, I think dogs do represent this rule to themselves. Here's the story.
One day in the yard I call over McCoy, the giant old goof of a German Shepherd. He charges straight toward me with just a little too much enthusiasm. At first I think that he's going to stop or swerve, but after a moment I realize that he cannot stop and his freakishly large, heavy head is headed at a dog-gallop straight at my crotch. Then, at the last moment, he ducks his head and goes through my legs instead of crashing into me. I sigh in relief and turn around.
As I turn around one of the other dogs, Tasha, the dominant dog (or bitch, to be technical), knocks McCoy down growling at him. She almost never asserts dominance over McCoy (this is only the second or third time in several years), so this is unusual. She's clearly enforcing the chicken rule. She has to understand, in some way, what the rule is and that it has normative force.
Unless there is some way she can enforce this rule on the other dog without representing the rule, then Dennett has got to be wrong. And I really don't see how she can behave this way without representing the rule, without knowing what the rule is. She didn't just follow a rule, she acted to enforce a rule that she must have understood. I just don't see how that's possible without some sort of representation of the rule.
It would be tempting to say that there's a rule that dominant animals act in such-and-such a way under such-and-such circumstances, and that this does not require representing the rule and recognizing its normative character. But the problem with seeing it this way is that the circumstances required to follow this rule involve the failure of another dog to follow the rule. That requires some sort of representation of that rule as something the other dog should follow.
I don't know whether representing the rule is necessary for morality, but I don't see this as an insurmountable barrier to animals. The abilities that set us apart from other animals always seem more a matter of degree than of kind.
I think you can make a case that representing rules to oneself is not necessary. Maybe humans don't represent rules to themselves either. I something think about the consequences of my actions, but I don't know that I represent rules to myself very often. Still, I'd like to think I'm a moral agent even when I don't do that. Anyway, that's not the point of this little post. I have an example that looks to show that some animals besides humans can represent to themselves rules governing how they should behave.
Here's some background information relevant to the story. Dogs have a dominance hierarchy. They behave in various ways that either establish the hierarchy, enforce it or show what the hierarchy is. One of these behaviors I call the game of chicken. The way our German Shepherds play chicken is that one of dog will charge headlong at the other dog from one side and he/she either swerves at the last moment or the other dog dodges out of the way. I'm not sure whether they do this to establish dominance or to show that dominance once it has been established in some other way. But the rule is fairly simple: the submissive dog gives way to the dominant dog.
Of course, the fact that the dogs follow this rule does not mean that they represent that rule to themselves. Even a rock can follow a rule without representing it. However, I think dogs do represent this rule to themselves. Here's the story.
One day in the yard I call over McCoy, the giant old goof of a German Shepherd. He charges straight toward me with just a little too much enthusiasm. At first I think that he's going to stop or swerve, but after a moment I realize that he cannot stop and his freakishly large, heavy head is headed at a dog-gallop straight at my crotch. Then, at the last moment, he ducks his head and goes through my legs instead of crashing into me. I sigh in relief and turn around.
As I turn around one of the other dogs, Tasha, the dominant dog (or bitch, to be technical), knocks McCoy down growling at him. She almost never asserts dominance over McCoy (this is only the second or third time in several years), so this is unusual. She's clearly enforcing the chicken rule. She has to understand, in some way, what the rule is and that it has normative force.
Unless there is some way she can enforce this rule on the other dog without representing the rule, then Dennett has got to be wrong. And I really don't see how she can behave this way without representing the rule, without knowing what the rule is. She didn't just follow a rule, she acted to enforce a rule that she must have understood. I just don't see how that's possible without some sort of representation of the rule.
It would be tempting to say that there's a rule that dominant animals act in such-and-such a way under such-and-such circumstances, and that this does not require representing the rule and recognizing its normative character. But the problem with seeing it this way is that the circumstances required to follow this rule involve the failure of another dog to follow the rule. That requires some sort of representation of that rule as something the other dog should follow.
I don't know whether representing the rule is necessary for morality, but I don't see this as an insurmountable barrier to animals. The abilities that set us apart from other animals always seem more a matter of degree than of kind.
Books at the Wal-Mart
Visiting the local Wal-Mart this evening, I noticed in the book section a book titled something like The Boy Who Visited Heaven and Came Back. Right next to it were rows of vampire novels of different sorts. The cover of the boy-book did not say whether he had an insatiable thirst for the blood of living. Still, my local readers have a great fascination with people coming back from the dead. What I don't understand is whether they can tell that both sorts of books are fantasies or whether they believe one set of them is real and the other fantasy. If so, I don't know how they tell the difference.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)