Mindreading Animals: The Debate over What Animals Know about Other Minds by Robert W. Lurz

Author:Robert W. Lurz [Lurz, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2012-01-05T07:50:00+00:00

Figure 3.10

View of occluded amputated triangle from subordinate raven's perspective during the pretesting phase of the experiment. Note that the occluder is placed on the far side of the amputated triangle rather than in front.

On this version of the protocol, the complementary behavior-reading raven would have no reason to think that the dominant raven had a direct line of gaze to a whole occluded triangle at the time of the caching. For at the time of the caching, the occluded triangle did not look like a whole occluded triangle from the subordinate's perspective. Hence, such a behavior-reading raven would have no reason to think that the dominant raven in the test trial would try to pilfer from behind the whole triangle rather than from behind the amputated triangle. Nevertheless, the subordinate raven, if capable of attributing seeing-as, would have exactly the same general grounds for thinking that the dominant raven saw the occluded amputated triangle as a whole occluded triangle as it did in the original protocol. Hence, the seeing-as attributing subordinate raven is expected to behave just as it did in the original protocol-that is, to delay pilfering from behind the amputated triangle.

Thus, with the proper controls in place, the above experimental protocol has the power to discriminate between subordinate ravens that are capable of attributing seeing-as from their complementary behaviorreading counterparts that cannot. There is no guarantee, of course, that subordinate ravens will behave as the mindreading hypothesis here predicts. However, there is no guarantee that they will not, either. The point behind the protocol is to demonstrate in concrete terms how the logical problem can be overcome for tests of cognitive state attribution in animals.

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