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I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

theguardian.com

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Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#11

Post by grahamjameson »

Satam wrote: post #9
INTPenis wrote: post #5

I like the author's positive outlook on life. Because when I see a dog act like that, especially in a family where a child has taken focus, I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Me and my dog have been exclusive for almost a decade now. We have traveled across europe, always by my side. Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I've mostly worked r…

I think you're right that for a dog to live its best life it needs the ability to spend a lot of time outdoors with relative freedom. Our labrador had the chance to live like that in an excessively very large garden for his last 4 years. I'm glad he got that, I think it made his life much better. Looking back, when he stayed with us in an apartment he must've been depressed.

I would like to expand on this and suggest that this applies to humans as well.

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#12

Post by rootusrootus »

INTPenis wrote: post #5

I like the author's positive outlook on life. Because when I see a dog act like that, especially in a family where a child has taken focus, I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Me and my dog have been exclusive for almost a decade now. We have traveled across europe, always by my side. Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I've mostly worked r…

> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules.

I regularly meet people like that when I'm camping. I find it pretty frustrating. So many rules like that have basis in reality, they are not just meant to annoy.

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#13

Post by MissPinocchio »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #8
INTPenis wrote: post #5

I like the author's positive outlook on life. Because when I see a dog act like that, especially in a family where a child has taken focus, I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Me and my dog have been exclusive for almost a decade now. We have traveled across europe, always by my side. Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I've mostly worked r…

> I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety Think you're underestimating how much your dog probably likes you... Dogs have a different relationship to their owner than people do with their best friends or parents. It's like the best parts of each relationship wrapped into one for dogs.

[dead]

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#15

Post by IncreasePosts »

pdonis wrote: post #6
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #4

The post contains a pretty strong assertion that dogs cannot perform mental reflection: > In the authentic happiness Shadow finds in the most banal of activities, his commitment to life and action is one that we humans find so hard to emulate. This is because of something that happened to us: a great schism in consciousness that we know as reflection. We humans are the world heavyweight champions of thinking about ou…

Is there any evidence that dogs can perform mental reflection?

What would dog mental reflection even look like? "I should have chosen a different route when chasing that rabbit?"

I don't think there is any evidence for mental reflection at this moment, but the nature of reflection is that is entirely internal, and we don't really know in what manner dogs have cognition.

But, the trend seems to be that we only learn more about the inner lives of animals as time goes on. 100 years ago it was accepted that non-human animals were essentially automatons that didn't feel feelings or have emotions, or engage in any kind of thought, which we know now is not true.

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#16

Post by abainbridge »

pdonis wrote: post #6
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #4

The post contains a pretty strong assertion that dogs cannot perform mental reflection: > In the authentic happiness Shadow finds in the most banal of activities, his commitment to life and action is one that we humans find so hard to emulate. This is because of something that happened to us: a great schism in consciousness that we know as reflection. We humans are the world heavyweight champions of thinking about ou…

Is there any evidence that dogs can perform mental reflection?

Yep. When I walk into a room containing my dog and the poo it did on the carpet two hours earlier, it is sorry about what it did.

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#17

Post by bitwize »

Dogs derive much of their meaning and satisfaction in life from their humans. I know that when my wife and I leave ours in the house for too long, they start to become agitated; upon our return one of them, a Catahoula, has made a habit of complaining loudly, as is typical of her breed, as if to say "Where have you been? You belong here with us!" Oh, and a minute can count as "too long".

Shadow gets excited upon hearing "do you want to come with?" because the repetitiveness of the outing doesn't matter. It's time spent with his human and that is more than enough. It's literally what he was made to do: in need of a faithful companion (other humans being too dodgy) we took one of nature's finest predators and engineered it over millennia, bending its will to need our companionship to the point of utter emotional dependency. Dogs, compared to wolves, even have extra muscles around their eyes whose sole purpose appears to be to enable them to emote to humans more effectively.

Furthermore, dogs have the approximate intelligence of a human toddler... do any of you remember being three or four years old, and every single ride in the car was a new adventure to look forward to? I know that half of Hackernews considers it a biological impossibility to remember anything before about age seven, if that, but maybe when you have a toddler-level brain, things are still full of wonder that might be mundane or forgettable to adult humans.

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#18

Post by pdonis »

abainbridge wrote: post #16
pdonis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that dogs can perform mental reflection?

Yep. When I walk into a room containing my dog and the poo it did on the carpet two hours earlier, it is sorry about what it did.

> When I walk into a room containing my dog and the poo it did on the carpet two hours earlier, it is sorry about what it did.

This shows that the dog knows it did something you didn't want it to do, yes. I'm not sure it shows "thinking about ourselves, scrutinising and evaluating what we do and why we do it", which is how the article this discussion is about described "mental reflection". Our dogs have made messes in our house and have shown evidence that they know they're not supposed to, but I see no evidence that they have done any reflection on why they did it.

Of course "mental reflection" is not an all or nothing thing, obviously there is a continuum of possibilities. So a more precise phrasing of my question might be: is there any evidence that dogs can perform mental reflection at a point on that continuum anywhere near the point where humans do it? Or are they only capable of it at a point on the continuum much, much closer to the other end, the "no reflection at all" end?

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#19

Post by gretch »

rootusrootus wrote: post #12
INTPenis wrote: post #5

I like the author's positive outlook on life. Because when I see a dog act like that, especially in a family where a child has taken focus, I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Me and my dog have been exclusive for almost a decade now. We have traveled across europe, always by my side. Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I've mostly worked r…

> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I regularly meet people like that when I'm camping. I find it pretty frustrating. So many rules like that have basis in reality, they are not just meant to annoy.

As a dog owner, I agree with you.

I KNOW that my dog would never hurt anyone.

But I also know that no one else in the world has spent hundreds of hours with my dog, and to them he is a strange and large animal. Inevitably some of these ppl probably have some kind of childhood trauma related to dogs.

So I always have him leashed where the rules are to have a leash.

Re: I wag, therefore I am: the philosophy of dogs

#20

Post by jholman »

INTPenis wrote: post #5

I like the author's positive outlook on life. Because when I see a dog act like that, especially in a family where a child has taken focus, I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Me and my dog have been exclusive for almost a decade now. We have traveled across europe, always by my side. Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I've mostly worked r…

My sense is that dogs prioritize pack/family togetherness ahead of freedom. They don't value all other people (and to a dog, "people" means dogs, humans, and sometimes other species), but also they do not only value their "owner". They value their family, their pack. They want to be with those they want to be with, in action and in rest.

After that, they value things like food, exercise, curiousity, and the absence of immediate pain.

Most dogs, that haven't been traumatized, seem to have a pretty reasonable attitude toward personal safety: you mustn't let fear rule you. But some dogs, that have been traumatized, can be inordinately concerned with what they perceive to be their personal safety, in some cases to the point of (understandable, tragic) derangement.

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