Dogs Prove Human Exceptionalism
Everyone knows that dogs did not evolve, they were (and are still, technically) wolves that were intelligently designed by us.
The tight bond between humans and our best friends, and more particularly their exposure to our love and our genetic and behavioral manipulation has created special traits not often seen in the natural world. From the story: Dogs are becoming more intelligent and are even learning morals from human contact, scientists claim. They say the fact that dogs' play rarely escalates into a fight shows the animals abide by social rules...
Still, we shouldn't make too much out of this:
Dr Peter Pongracz from Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, and colleagues have produced evidence dog barks contain information that people can understand. They found even people who have never owned a dog can recognise the emotional 'meaning' of barks produced in various situations, such as when playing, left alone and confronted by a stranger.
His team has now developed a computer program that can aggregate hundreds of barks recorded in various settings and boil them down to their basic acoustic ingredients. They found each of the different types of bark has distinct patterns of frequency, tonality and pulsing, and that an artificial neural network can use these features to correctly identify a bark it has never encountered before.
This is further evidence that barking conveys information about a dog's mental state, reports New Scientist magazine. They also discovered people can correctly identify aggregated barks as conveying happiness, loneliness or aggression.
'Even children from the age of six who have never had a dog recognise these patterns,' says Dr Pongracz.Dogs are not just able to 'speak' to us--they can also understand some aspects of human communication.
Dr Alexandra Horowitz from Barnard College in New York prefers the term "theory of behaviour" to describe dogs' apparent insight. She said: 'I think there is a massive territory between a theory of mind and a theory of behaviour.' Her own recent study illustrates the point--when dogs play together, they use appropriate signals for grabbing attention or signalling the desire to play depending on their playmate's apparent level of attention, such as whether it is facing them or side-on.This much is clear: It took the exceptional species--us--to change what were only 10,000 years ago gray wolves and intentionally transform them into the multitudinous breeds of dogs that are not only noble--and at times delightfully goofy--but also protectors, wonderful companions, and the givers and receivers of tremendous love and joy.
That could be interpreted as mind reading, she admits, but a simpler explanation is that dogs are reading body language and reacting in stereotyped ways.
Labels: Human Exceptionalism. Dogs.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 4:47 PM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
I agree with you Wesley Smith. This shoots down a boy is a dog is a rat theory because I will never expect a rat to convey feelings of happiness or loneliness. Likewise, I would never expect a dog to be capable of building a civilization. All animals are not equal. All animals are different and unique and humans are exceptional.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks johnnydontdoit.
This comment has been removed by the author.
We're also the only animals intelligent enough to quite literally destroy our own planet in a myriad of ways. Not so sure I'm really proud of this part of our exceptional status ;)
Well O, if we did that, at least we would know it is wrong. : )
I certainly agree that dogs are as they are as a result of human intervention. In fact I've often cited the efforts described in "Before the Dawn" of Russian scientists who effectively domesticated a type of silver fox in remarkably few generations.
However, this process is selective breeding, a hit or miss process. As such I find it curious you call this "design" of any kind, let alone "intelligent design." We did not design dog DNA or even alter it, we just selected which canines were allowed to breed and which puppies were culled. Design is a process that starts with a blank page.
Your use of this disingenuous term makes it appear you are more interested in flogging fundamentalist evolution-denying teachings than you are in describing the actual process of the development of the human/dog relationship. In fact, I believe that in selectively breeding dogs we do nothing more than act as agents of evolution.
padraig: Re the term ID: It's meant to be funny and ironic. Grow a sense of humor.
As to your other points: Of course we didn't invent DNA. But through selective breeding we did create attributes we wanted in our canine friends, and we did it with intentionality. Or to put it another way, we intelligently designed dogs to meet human desires and needs.
Wes, the other day I was in a movie theater and a guy was sitting in front of me with what at first looked to be a date, but turned out to be one of those big dogs with long blond hair. That was odd enough, but then I noticed the dog was reacting to the movie. When the good guy came out, she wagged her tail, when the bad guy came out she'd growl and raise her back.
When the movie was over, I told the dog's owner I was amazed at her reaction to the movie.
"Yeah, so was I," he said, "She hated the book."
THAT, Wes, is a joke, aka humor.
"Everyone knows that dogs did not evolve, they were (and are still, technically) wolves that were intelligently designed by us."
THAT, Wes, is not.
Padrag: I didn't say it was a JOKE. I said it was meant to be humorous and ironic. I was subliminally referring to the hysteria out there about ID and the Discovery Institute, demonstrated vividly by your own reaction. Perhaps some gene therapy to improve your sense of humor would help.
Loosen up out there.
Trust me Wes, I'm not the most humor-impaired person in this discussion by a factor of at least one.
And (getting to the main point), I agreed with the bit about the dogs. Hardly a hysterical reaction.
What I called you on, and which spurred your hissy fit, was your repeated misuse of the term "intelligent design," which you now claim was ironic. If you really did, then I'd warn you that irony is tricky and you'd better learn to make the smirky face icon. ;)
"Design is a process that starts with a blank page."
Um, no, I don't think so. I don't know much about ID, and the reason is that I don't have enough background in life sciences to really weigh the arguments pro and con. But I do know that the concept of irreducible complexity does not start with a blank page. Maybe you can start from eyespots and point out a natural-selection pathway to eyeballs like ours, and maybe you can't, but either way you don't start with nothing at all.
Also - I've thought a lot about our cats, and how generations of cat-breeding that happened just because the cats that were responsive to humans and therefore attractive to them and able to be nurtured by them had an advantage over the feral ones. My kitties are experts on my husband and daughter and me. I read somewhere that people are likely to greet their pets before their spouses when they come home. That's true in my house, and it's because the pets know who is supposed to come home when and are invariably at the door waiting.
Laura: Since cats get us to do what THEY want, they are actually the highest life form. Surely no one would argue against KITTY EXCEPTIONALISM!
padrig: This is a very minor contretemp, n'est ce pas? The hysteria comment was in reference to your black smoke about my flogging fundamentalistic anti evolution by claiming that dogs are intelligently designed by humans, not your agreement about the wonder of dogs.
Let's see if I can get the wink right, because I am definitely icon impaired: ;) There, that only took me five minutes.
It is interesting that you would use the term intelligent design (which is something that people who side with traditional religion-based morality people are told we approve of) to refer to human design. It's sacreligious, first of all, and it's rather scary to think that genetic engineering (not from a blank state, but with a think enough magic marker that it may as well be) is close enough to ID that people might get confused and think it's something GOd wants us to do.
That was Will Saletan's belief: God endowed us with the ideal of equality and the tools to finish the job, so we have some duty to perfect it. Is Saletan into ID? I thought he was a critic, just like I thought you were a critic of genetic engineering, so it is weird for the two to morph into one here.
Why don't we just stick with calling it Creationism, so that we don't get it confused with human genetic engineering as a form of intelligent design? It is at least as compatible with science and evidence and history as ID is, and less susceptible to confusing humans with God.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home