[FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

[Nick Thompson]

David, 

Well, unshared ontologies SOME of the time.  It's the inconsistency -- in myself and others -- that drives me bonkers. 

Great to hear from you.  I am returning to SF a week from Saturday.  Where are you? 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 3:10 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

Nick, what was the cat dosing with, LSD? (just being a smart-a__)

Perhaps people provide a psychological question with a physiological answer for the same reason you reply to a consciousness question with a behavioral answer? Unshared ontologies?

davew

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018, at 1:08 PM, David West wrote:
> Nick, what was the cat dosing with, LSD? (just being a smart-a__)
> 
> Perhaps people provide a psychological question with a physiological 
> answer for the same reason you replay to a consciousness question with 
> a behavioral answer?
> 
> davew
> 
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2018, at 12:59 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Marcus,
> > 
> > I have never understood how it comes to be that people answer a 
> > psychological question with a physiological answer.  I, of course, 
> > share your belief that all psychological functions are physiologically (or
> > electronically) mediated.   Still, for instance, it would seem odd to 
> > me, if I asked a person if an animal can calculate the square root 
> > of three, for that person to answer, "That animal does not have the 
> > sort of brain that can calculate the square root of three".  The 
> > natural course of argument would seem for me for the person to 
> > answer the question about the calculation activities of the animal 
> > and THEN go on, perhaps, to explain that answer in terms of the 
> > physiological limitations of the animal's brain.
> > 
> > We once had a famously smart cat.  One day we were watching TV and a 
> > cat came on.  Our cat roused itself from dosing on the rug, went 
> > over and looked behind the tv, came back to the rug, looked at the 
> > TV, looked at us disgustedly, and lay down on the rug with its back to the TV.  It
> > never roused to a cat on the TV again.   No cat would be dumb enough to 
> > be fooled by pornography.   I don't know what that proves about the 
> > question at hand, but I love cat stories. 
> > 
> > Nick
> > 
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University 
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus 
> > Daniels
> > Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 1:53 PM
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> > <friam at redfish.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?
> > 
> > I would say this relates to the reality (or not) of first-world 
> > problems.   Humans that thrive in the first world must form (or be 
> > educated to acquire) higher-order representations.    Psychologizing is 
> > one process that leads to higher-order representations.    In an 
> > artificial deep neural network, the neurons in the higher layers 
> > represent more and more abstract interpretations of inputs that have 
> > be presented, but it can take hundreds of thousands of neurons and 
> > dozens of layers.
> > 
> > One might imagine pets that have fewer neurons and less connectivity 
> > amongst neurons could still develop higher-level representations 
> > provided that these adaptations did not interfere with other 
> > essential information processing functions -- keeping in mind the 
> > most important function for a pet is probably anticipating the 
> > meaning of human signals.
> > 
> > Anyway, we'll make great pets. 
> > 
> > Marcus
> > 
> > On 9/17/18, 11:30 AM, "Friam on behalf of Nick Thompson" <friam- 
> > bounces at redfish.com on behalf of nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > 
> >     Yes, Glen and Marcus.  Very interesting. 
> >     
> >     But, "Do animals psychologize?" 
> >     
> >     N
> >     
> >     Nicholas S. Thompson
> >     Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> >     Clark University
> >     http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> >     
> >     -----Original Message-----
> >     From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
> >     Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 10:57 AM
> >     To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> >     Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?
> >     
> >      Glen writes:
> >       
> >     "Even in your example, we might notice that even though there are N licenses
> >     doled out, the deer population continues to rise.  It would be
> >     over-intervention to simply issue more licenses. Perhaps the people getting
> >     the licenses are mostly an aging population who don't hunt much anymore but
> >     have some semi-automated approach to getting a license?"
> >     
> >     A population estimation input comes from tagging stations relative to issued
> >     licenses by category of deer, so they can & do close-the-loop by way of
> >     enforcement.  
> >     The population estimation techniques require some assumptions, of course.   
> >     
> >     Marcus
> >     
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