Theories on the Cognitive Capacities of Nonhuman Animals - Essay Example

Introduction There has been a great debate in the fields of Psychology and Philosophy whether animals have thoughts despite of lacking speech ability. According to Descartes (1970, p.207), animals do not speak not because they lack the organs needed for speech but because they have no thoughts. This statement was agreed upon by Locke (1975, pp.159-160) who said that animals were incapable of constructing idea or abstract since they do not use words or language. Language is the evident that the process of acquiring knowledge took place and since animals can not speak, they lack the general signs that they possess intelligence. However, there are studies such as the classical and operant conditioning which somehow proved that even animals has the ability to learn. These studies opened the possibilities that thought exists even without language. This issue is the focus of this paper. The paper discusses and tries to address the issue on the interrelation between thought and language and the possibility that thought exists in nonhuman animals. Theories on the Cognitive Capacities of Nonhuman Animals Darwin (1920), the person behind the theory of evolution, suggests that human mind and that of animals are different on certain degree and not of kind. This statement implies that animals may also have the capability to think but not in the way and degree that human does. Theories and studies on different animals in search for the cognitive ability of animals provide evidence or somehow support this statement of Darwin. In earlier theories, the famous classical conditioning is one of the evidences of animal cognition. It was proposed by Ivan Pavlov; with the theory about the relationship between stimuli and responses using a dog, Pavlov discovered that animals could learn to display certain responses to stimuli already eliciting those responses (Tiffany, 1999 p.216). The operant conditioning started with different experiments, especially that of B.F. Skinner. Skinner developed the operant conditioning using rats and pigeons. In his rat experiment, he put a rat in the cage called Skinner Box that had a button on a wall which when pressed released a food pellet. When the rat accidentally pressed the button, food pellet came out which caused the rat to pressed the button more. When the button can not anymore give the rat some pellets, the rat stopped pressing the button. Through this theory, it was discovered that animals have the ability to learn through reinforcement or reward. However, even if Skinner used nonhuman animals with his experiment, he was still one of those who favor the total dependence of thought on language along with other behaviorists such as Watson, Ryle, Rosenberg, Wittgenstein and others (Chrucky, 1990). The operant theory is used today in human psychology specifically in child psychology, behavior and autism therapy (Boeree, 2006). In recent times, Donald Griffin was the person to introduce cognitive ethology in his book entitled “The question of animal awareness: Evolutionary continuity of mental experience”. Defining cognitive ethology, it is the evolutionary and comparative study of nonhuman animal thought processes, consciousness, beliefs, or rationality (Beckoff, 1995). Cognitive ethology, unlike psychology, is concern with the different solutions that nonhuman animals have found for common problems such as food catching, individual recognition and discrimination, assessments of dominance, habitat selection, mate choice, teaching, imitation, communication, tool-use, injury feigning, and observational learning (Beckoff, 1995). In Griffin’s other book “Animal Minds Beyond Cognition to Consciousness”, (2001), he proposed evidences suggesting animal consciousness. These are: the versatility with which many animals adjust their behavior appropriately when confronted with challenges; evidences about animal thoughts and feelings, and evidences from neuropsychology (Griffin, 2001). Walker (1983 p.81 on Griffin, 2001), a psychologist, concluded in his book entitled Animal Thought that “some kind of mental activity is being attributed to the animals: that is, there is considered to be some internal shifting and selection of information rather than simply the release of responses by a certain set of environmental conditions. Knowledge of goals, knowledge of space, and knowledge of actions that may lead to goals seem to be independent, but can be fitted together by animals when the need arise”. He also added that our organ of thought or ability to think may be superior and we may use it better than animals did but it does not mean that animals do not have the ability to think (388). At this point where several theories have been presented, it is better to define cognition to better realise whether cognition really exists in animals. As Shettleworth (2001 p.278) defined, cognition includes perception, learning, memory and decision making, or all ways in which animals take in information about the world through senses, process, retain, and decide to act on it. With this definition of cognition, we can say that cognition does exist in animals. Nonhuman animal cognition are confirmed by observing them, the way they acquire food, the way they protect their offspring, they sense and know danger, and their determination of to what species they belong which is evident on how they choose their mate. However, nonhuman animal cognition can be better confirmed by studying how the Moreover, the inability of nonhuman animals to verbal communication seems to be the barrier on the confirmation that thought, understanding, cognition, or consciousness does exists in nonhuman animals since the process of knowledge acquisition is a subjective experience. For example, in schools, students are given written or oral examination to determine what they have learned. Even if the teachers taught the same things with all his students, the result of each student’s examination are expected to be different from each other since each student has different ways of learning and acquiring knowledge, which proved that knowledge acquisition is a subjective experience. A teacher will only determine how far his students have learned through language, verbally or written. Without an examination, the thoughts imparted by the teacher to his students will never be determined. Language of Animals, is it possible? Defining each term first will help to better determine whether thought is independent of language or the other way around. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), language is the communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols, while thought is defined as the act or process of thinking; cogitation; idea or product of thinking; the faculty of thinking or reasoning; the intellectual activity or production of a particular time or group. With this definition, it is noticeable that language is the one dependent on thought since without thought there is nothing to be communicated about. Language, according to Chomsky (1980), is claimed to facilitate free expression of thought, to clarify ideas, to establish social relations and to communicate information. If this is to be the case, then we can claim that nonhuman animals, by observation, have their languages. Dogs waggle their tails to express happiness or to communicate with other species of its kind. Dolphins, monkeys and bees as well as cats, rats, birds and others have their language of sorts to be able to communicate with species of their kind and sometimes, to communicate with human too. Nonhuman animals such as killer whales and dolphins established social relationship without the language that human has (Conner & Norris, 1982 on Kaiser, 1990). Furthermore, Chomsky (1980) stated that language is used to express thought which means that thought may exist even without expression. He added that language is used to clarify ideas which could also mean that thought is possible without its clarification. Since animals can not perform human language, they have their own way of expressing and clarifying their thoughts, dogs cry out of fear or when hurt, Human language, unlike those of nonhuman animals, is more powerful since it is composed of symbol systems such as phonemes, sign languages, letters, numbers, and many more which are used in both communicational and representational capacities (Kaiser, 1990). Human have long learned to integrate communicative ability with these symbols. These symbols are the representational capacity of human language which strengthened the communicational role of language, facilitating the acquisition and storage of knowledge (Kaiser, 1990). Moreover, language is not only rapid vocal behavior but neural mechanisms developed for encoding and decoding phonemic communication also necessary (Kaiser, 1990). This means that although there are some nonhuman species that can be able to perform vocalization such as dolphins and parrots, these nonhuman animals still do not have developed enough neural mechanisms like that of a human. Nonhuman brain are said to be less developed as implied by scientist Bruce Lahn (UCMC, 2005). According to Lahn (UCMC, 2005), “humans evolved their cognitive abilities not due to a few accidental mutations but from an enormous number of mutations acquired though exceptionally intense selection favoring more complex cognitive abilities”. This has been the result of the recent examination done on the same amount of genes involved in brain development and function in four different species: humans, macaques, rats and mice; they found out that brain-related genes evolved much faster in humans than the other species (UCMC, 2005). Conclusion The issue on whether thought without language is possible can be addressed using the theories about animal cognition and the studies on the existence of animal language. Griffins cognitive ethology which is supported by many other individuals such as Shettleworth, Walker and Beckoff prove that nonhuman animals have the ability to acquire knowledge and the mere acquisition of knowledge is evidence that thought does exist in nonhuman animals. Others may argue that how come that animal cognition is possible when they do not have the language. In that case, they should clarify which language they refer to. Given the definition of language above, there are evidences that animals have their language but in much lower degree than human language due to the inability of nonhuman animals in speech ability. The inability of nonhuman animals to verbal communication is due to their brain structure which is much less developed compared to the brain development of human. Therefore, it can be concluded that thought without human language is possible. Giving particular interest to nonhuman animals, they can be considered to have thought but at much lower degree than the thought existing to humans since they lack of the ability to verbally communicate. It can also be concluded that it is the language without thought that is impossible because language is particularly used for communication whether it is representational or communicational because there is nothing to be communicated about without thought. That is language was created out of thought. Nevertheless, this issue is still a debatable one since many theories and ideas are still coming out of this issue. References: Bekoff, Marc (1995) Cognitive Ethology and the Explanation of Nonhuman Animal Behavior. Comparative Approaches to Cognitive Science. J.A. Meyer and H. L. Roitblat, eds 119-150 Boeree, C.G. (2006), B.F. 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