Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness

by Donald R. Griffin

In Animal Minds, Donald R. Griffin takes us on a guided tour of the recent explosion of scientific research on animal mentality. Are animals consciously aware of anything, or are they merely living machines, incapable of conscious thoughts or emotional feelings? How can we tell? Such questions have long fascinated Griffin, who has been a pioneer at the forefront of research in animal cognition for decades, and is recognized as one of the leading behavioral ecologists of the twentieth century.

With this new edition of his classic book, which he has completely revised and updated, Griffin moves beyond considerations of animal cognition to argue that scientists can and should investigate questions of animal consciousness. Using examples from studies of species ranging from chimpanzees and dolphins to birds and honeybees, he demonstrates how communication among animals can serve as a "window" into what animals think and feel, just as human speech and nonverbal communication tell us most of what we know about the thoughts and feelings of other people. Even when they don't communicate about it, animals respond with sometimes surprising versatility to new situations for which neither their genes nor their previous experiences have prepared them, and Griffin discusses what these behaviors can tell us about animal minds. He also reviews the latest research in cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed startling similarities in the neural mechanisms underlying brain functioning in both humans and other animals. Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and explores its profound philosophical and ethical implications.

Genres: Science, Animals, Psychology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Biology, Nature

376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Donald Redfield Griffin was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and considered the founder of the modern study of animal thinking and consciousness known as "cognitive ethology." He made his mark early in his career by helping to discover how bats navigate, and coined the term "echolocation" to describe the phenomenon.

"An emeritus professor of animal behavior at Rockefeller University, Dr. Griffin gave birth to the field known as cognitive ethology in 1978 when he broke a scientific taboo by suggesting that animals might have the capacity to think and reason, and that scientists should study these mental processes."

"In his publications, Dr. Griffin argued that the great complexity and adaptability of animal behavior, from the sophisticated food-gathering behavior of chimps to the clever fishing techniques of herons, suggest that animals are not mere automatons. Instead, he maintained, they are thinking beings, even if they might be thinking about different things, in ways entirely different from humans." Prior to this—and to a lesser extent even afterward—most scientists considered the matter of animal thinking to be a subject that belonged far outside the realm of scientific exploration. The field's natural connection to movements like animal rights advocacy continues to make some scientists wary.

Dr. Griffin died in Lexington, Massachusetts, at 88 years of age. (New York Times obituary.)

Reviews

[Thalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don Griffin is a gentle man and inquisitive scientist, who, I believe, tried to explore the notion of animal cognition through naturalistic observations during a period of time where being called anthropomorphic was a fate worse than being stripped of tenure, for some. This is a book of tales about animal behavior that lead to questions about animal cognition. Griffin does not necessarily have the answers (and no-one does), but it is thought-provoking.

[Leonardo]

Comentado en esta clase.

[Alejandro Ramirez · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was drafting my naïve, premature and ambitious article “A Framework for the study of cognitive science” I realized that in human mind it is too hard to study in isolation one mental phenomenon from another. Furthermore, I assume is almost never the case when a single function is active in it’s “pure” state, but always acting in collusion or competition with other functions.


I assumed that maybe the basic functions should be first studied in simpler organisms where that cross-pollination of functions is lower. Now I realize that I was half wrong. That cross-pollination will exist even in the simplest organisms. It would just happen to occur between simpler functions. Or maybe I should say, a subset of simpler versions than those observed in higher animals.



Yet, that first assumption led me by chance to this amazing book, by probably the father of cognitive ethnology (he coined the term). Also, later I realized it was the same assumption Kandel made when started his study of memory on invertebrate, which was very criticized by his peers.



Griffin provides an endless list of animal behavior, in the categories of: finding food, predation, construction of artifacts, tools and special devices, categories and concepts, psychological indices of thinking, communication as evidence of thinking, symbolic communication, deception and manipulation, and a full chapter on dolphins and apes. Some of these behaviors are so complex, adaptable, and ingenious, that is impossible to think that are blindly programmed genetically. Even in the cases of species with very rudimentary nervous systems, such as bees and ants. The behavior of social insects (communications, voting to consensus, cultivating mushroom gardens, making war and taking slaves, seems too way too complex for their nervous system. This suggests to me that intelligence can’t be evaluated purely with correlating complexity of behavior with complexity of nervous system. Yet, it would be very interesting to make that correlation.



Here is the review:



P4. “I will take now for granted that behavior and consciousness result entirely from events that occur in their central nervous systems. In other words, I will proceed on the basis of emergent materialism as analyzed by Bunge (1980, 6), Bunge and Ardilla (1987, 27) and Mahner and Bunge (1995, 205-12), and assume that subjective consciousness is an activity of central nervous systems”.



P13. Chalmers (1996) designated the question of how brains produce subjective awareness as the “hard problem”.



P7. Perceptual vs. Reflective consciousness.

- Perceptual is the “primary” one for Farthing (1992) and Lloyd (1989) and includes all sorts of awareness.

- Reflective is a subset of conscious experiences in which the content is conscious experiences in which the content is conscious experience itself. Reflective consciousness is thinking, or experiencing feelings, about thought or feelings themselves, and is often held to include self-awareness.



P14. Psychologist Natsoulas (1978) Based all these definitions on the Oxford English Dictionary:



- Consciousness 3 “The state of being mentally conscious aware of anything (…) is our most basic concept of consciousness, for it is implicated in all other senses. Being conscious must include being aware of something.” *Similar to Perceptual, though its content mail entail memories, anticipating, and imagining non-existing objects and events, as well as thinking about immediate sensory input.



- Consciousness 4. “The recognition by the thinking subject of his own acts or affections… One exemplifies C4 by being aware of, or being in a position to be aware of, one’s perception, thought, or other mental episode”.



There are other levels defined by Natsoulas, but nor in the scope of the book.



This makes me think about an important difference:



Let’s say you throw a rock to a glass and one to a cat.



- The glass will break as result of the impact of rocks molecules against its own.

- The cat will bruise, meow and jump.



But there is a significant difference. Besides being impacted at the molecular level, the cat creates a representation of the impact (via nervous activation of certain parts of the brain) and will react to these indirect Neural Representations of the impact. This creation of internal representations is, probably what can objectively be defined as C3 or Perceptual.



And then, a representation of an internal representation would produce several kinds of self-awareness, the most complete of which can be called self-consciousness, or C4 as defined above.



P29. Provides an account of Clever Hans, the famous horse that “couldn’t count”. I’m surprised that he doesn’t underline the point that, being too busy demonstrating that the horse did not do arithmetic, they didn’t acknowledge that reading the emotions was a much tougher trick that the animal was performing.



P128. Categories and concepts. The ability to abstract salient features from a complex pattern of simulation requires a refined ability to sort and evaluate sensory information so that only particular combination leads to the appropriate response.



P156. Averaging of EEG’s to repeated stimuli is called “evoked potentials”.

A subset with longer latencies, clearly correlated with moderately complex processing, are the “Event-Related Potential” (ERP’s). They are not a direct function of the sensory input, but are also affected by internal processes within the brain, including previous events.



Some have related these to human consciousness including Donchin (1983), Picton and Stuss (1984), Stuss, Picton and Cerri (1986) and Sommer, Matt and Leuthold (1990). Reviewed by Vergleer (1988) and Donchin and Coles (1988) in the journal Behavioral and Brain sciences.



Of a wide variety of components of ERP’s, the most interesting is the P300 wave. This is a positive potential occurring around 300 milliseconds after a stimulus. It lasts in many cases 100-200 milliseconds, and the peak varies somewhat but is ordinarily in the range of 300-400 msec.



Describes experiments when presenting a long series of uniform stimuli, a sound, t a given time the stimuli was not presented, and the P300 wave presented at the expected time, anyway. But there again, some other experiments Bullock et al (1993) showed that so-called omitted stimulus potentials can be recorded from the primary sensory nucleus of the medulla of sharks and rays, and even in the retina. Responses to stimuli omitted in the midst of along series are thus widespread among nervous systems.



P159. Neurons activated in monkeys both when he performs a specific movement and when it sees a human or monkey doing the same movement. Called “mirror neurons” by Gallese and Goldman (1998). I believe another explanation is that this is the area of the brain where the monkey has coded the “concept” for that movement. I’m not even sure if is a different explanation after all.



P161. Cowey and Stoering (1995) removed part of the visual cortex of 3 monkeys that have been trained to touch the place in the screen where there was a bright dot displayed, in order to get food. In a different experiment, they taught them to touch the sign “blank” when there was no light on the screen. In the second experiment, they signaled “blank” when the light was in their “blind” area from the cortical perspective, yet they could perform well the first experiment when if the light was on their “blind” area. This clearly demonstrates that they were not conscious about a stimuli that they could respond to in other ways (pointing its position).

This, I think, reinforces the idea of consciousness being a higher order process that operates in lower level processes. I don’t think I have discovered anything new yet.



P166. Semantic alarm calls.

Some African monkeys use different sounds to give alarms about 3 different types of predator. Each call elicits responses that are sensible to the type of predator. When the experimenters recorder a particular individual and gave false alarms using the recording (when the individual was not in sight) the group started diminishing reaction to this particular individual’s calls for alarm. Even if it wasn’t the same call used for the false alarm. As if they know he is prone to “cry wolf”.



P174. Honeyguides. Birds that lead humans to honeycombs since they can’t open them themselves! Did this cooperation had time to occur by evolution?



P187. the whole chapter 10, about the symbolic communication of bees, is so mind blowing that I wrote a full entry on my blog:

http://canguro3.blogspot.com/2007/11/...



P221. Deception and manipulation.

When a predator approaches the nest, the mother will often try to distract him by pretending to be a “sick” easy prey, limping, dragging a wing, exacerbating the behavior if the predator gets too close to the nest. Resuming to normal and start again from a different spot if its not working, and even crouches, holding his body close to the ground, lowers his head and runs away, resembling a small rodent, like a mouse!



P268. Recognizing that central nervous systems produce conscious experience, how can we judge how complex a nervous system must be to permit at least simple perceptual consciousness? One response to this dilemma is to assume a continuity of experience, with progressively simpler nervous systems permitting less and simpler conscious content. This approach is sometimes called panpsychism, or panexperimentalism, and it has appealed to some philosophers, including A.N. Whitehead.



P? He mentions somewhere that sleep is widespread in birds and mammals. It will also be very interesting making this correlation between sleep and brain anatomy / development (including infant vs. adult sleep in different species). What experiment could be made to demonstrate that animals use sleep for memory consolidation the same way that humans do? What experiment can be made to prove that animals dream?

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FAMED SCIENTIST EXPANDS UPON HIS PREVIOUS WORK

Author and professor Donald Griffin wrote in the Preface to this 1992 book, “This book will review evidence of versatile thinking by animals, and of equal significance will be a representative sampling of the wide range of scientific and scholarly opinion about animal minds. This spectrum of strongly advocated views demonstrates the basic importance attached to the nature of animal mentality by both scientists and philosophers. Cognitive ethology, the analysis of cognitive processes in nonhuman animals, has attracted thoughtful and constructive contributions from fields as diverse as behavioral ecology and the philosophy of mind… Many students of animal cognition avoid consideration of whether animal cognition is ever accompanied or influenced by conscious thinking. But because conscious awareness adds so much to an unconscious ‘sleepwalker’ existence, it is important to consider evidence suggesting both cognitive processes and conscious thinking.”

After recounting an instance of two lionesses chasing and killing a wildebeest, he explains, “A single observation such as this one cannot be taken as conclusive proof of intentional cooperation, but it is certainly very suggestive. Why else should the first two lionesses have climbed to conspicuous positions and waited where the wildebeest could easily see that they presented no serious danger? Why should a third lioness sneak so furtively along the ditch to a position about midway between the two groups of wildebeest?... The individual elements of group hunting behavior … have been observed by others… yet the ethologists who report detailed observations of lion behavior have been so reluctant to infer conscious intent to cooperate that they seem to have refrained from reporting as much of this type of behavior as they have actually observed.” (Pg. 65)

He suggests, “Despite the lack of completely conclusive evidence, it seems plausible that nest-building birds have some simple conscious desire and intention to produce an appropriate structure. Genetic influences may determine the general pattern of the desired result, but birds certainly vary their behavior as they work to achieve this goal. Although their efforts are not always totally efficient, and human observers can often imagine how they might do somewhat better, the birds give every indication of trying to achieve an anticipated goal.” (Pg. 80)

He notes, “It is unfortunate that [Irene] Pepperberg’s pioneering work is based on the behavior of a single bird [named ‘Alex’]. To date no one else has apparently attempted to replicate Pepperberg’s experiments, but she has begun to extend her experiments to include another parrot. Both steps are highly desirable, but pending such essential replication we can inquire as critically as possible what flaws might have escaped our notice. The first thought of any student of animal behavior is that some sort of inadvertent cuing may have taken place, that Alex may not have responded to the actual properties of the objects he was shown but to some unrecognized behavior of the trainer who presented the objects and asked the questions, something analogous to the cuing that explained the apparent ability of Clever Hans to perform feats of mental arithmetic. Such inadvertent signals would have to be quite subtle, some gesture that Alex took to mean he should say ‘same,’ ‘blue,’ ‘wood,’ ‘none,’ or any of the several other words he had learned.” (Pg. 173)

He states, “Adaptiveness is a completely separate matter from the possibility of conscious thinking. Because mantis shrimp are crustaceans a few centimeters in length, it is assumed a priori that they cannot possibly be conscious. Even when they are shown to engage in moderately complex and versatile behavior, these data are forced into the procrustean bed of mindless automatism. Yet mantis shrimp have well-organized central nervous systems, and while their neurophysiology has not been studied in detail it is unlikely to be very different from that of crayfish, which have all the basic mechanisms of synaptic interactions that are found in the central nervous systems of all complex animals.” (Pg. 200)

He reports, “The implications of the discovery that chimpanzees and other Great Apes could communicate in even a rudimentary form of language were truly shattering to the deep-seated faith in language as a unique human attribute separating humanity from the beasts. As a result, a series of heated controversies continues to rage over the degree to which the communicative behavior learned by apes is actually a simple form of language. Many criticisms of the earlier experiments with apes have been significantly constructive, and have led to a sharpening of scientific understanding of human language and its acquisition by young children. They have also led to improved and better controlled investigations of the communicative behavior of the apes, and these in turn have served to overcome many of the criticisms of the earlier studies. On balance, it now seems clear that apes have learned to communicate simple thoughts.” (Pg. 219)

He continues, “Nevertheless some critics have pointed out that apes are very adept at detecting inadvertent cues from their human companions, and that it is conceivable that even in these blind tests the ape could have received information about which sign to produce from unintentional sounds or movements of the observers. It is also conceivable that they could have inadvertently conveyed information to each other about what sign was appropriate… Although every sort of precaution and repeated checking of all possible sources of error are always appropriate, these criticisms seem quite far-fetched, and later experiments of [Sue] Savage-Rumbaugh and her colleagues … render explanations based on inadvertent cueing extremely implausible.” (Pg/ 220)

He says, “Still another feature of human language is generally believed to be lacking in all animal communication systems, including those of the signing apes, is creativity, that is, the ability to conceive and convey new messages, different from anything ever thought or said before. It is often claimed that an animal’s communication is limited to a few relatively fixed signals that are genetically determined, and that it is incapable of producing novel communicative signals in newly arisen circumstances. Not all animal signals are rigid and invariant; in fact, one contrast with human language that is often emphasized is the graded nature of many animal signals that are believed to be expressions of emotion varying only in intensity but lacking any semantic content. As mentioned above, a few clear exceptions to this generalization are now known, such as the semantic alarm calls of vervet monkeys…” (Pg. 226)

He observes, “We usually suppose that animal thinking must be a simpler version of our own thinking about the animal’s situation. But there is really no reason to assume that animal thoughts are rigorously realistic. Apes and porpoises often seem playful, mischievous, and fickle, and anything but businesslike , practical, and objective. Insofar as animals think and feel, they may fear imaginary predators, imagine unrealistically delicious foods, or think about objects and events that do not actually exist in the world around them… As we try to imagine the content of animal thoughts, we should consider the possibility that their thoughts, like some of ours, may be less than perfect replicas of reality. Animals may experience fantasies as well as realistic representations of their environments.” (Pg. 258)

He concludes, “I am confident that with patience and critical investigation we can begin to discern what life is like, subjectively, to particular animals under specific conditions, beginning with the sorts of evidence reviewed in previous chapters. Cognitive ethologists can certainly improve greatly on these preliminary inferences, once the creative ingenuity of scientists is directed constructively toward the important goal of answering [Thomas] Nagel’s basic question, What is it like to be a bat, or any other animal? Contrary to the widespread pessimistic opinion that the content of animal thinking is hopelessly inaccessible to scientific inquiry, the communicative signals used by many animals provide empirical data on the basis of which much can be reasonably inferred about their subjective mental experiences. Because mentality is one of the most important capabilities that distinguishes living animals from the rest of the known universe, seeking to understand animal minds is even more exciting and significant than elaborating our picture of inclusive fitness or discovering new molecular mechanisms. Cognitive ethology presents us with one of the supreme scientific challenges of our times, and it calls for our best efforts of critical and imaginative investigation." (Pg. 260)

This book will be of keen interest to those studying animal minds, and related topics.

[Grazyna Nawrocka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to find out more about how animals communicate and function in groups. Although this book has not met my expectations, it opened my mind to problems with establishing criteria and common vocabulary, so all scientists can get to the same level, and avoid "Babel syndrome." I found it interesting to see how hard it is to establish concept of what suffice as a proof of thinking (communicating in sign language is not, using tools is not, creating new terms is not...).

Chapter about trying to map thinking in brain left me surprised, and sad. Severing connections in monkeys brains to see how the animals will operate is cruel, and might be missing the point. I didn't like this chapter, and am very surprised that scientists do not utilize tools that we have. There are non-intervention tools for mapping activities in the brain, i.e. using EEG.

Recently on Facebook person called Eric Trapp posted video of kitten watching horror movie. There was also other post, showing big TV screen with running lion, which scarred another kitten and sent it scurrying away. It means, cats can see and understand what is happening on the screen. I believe so do dogs. Why don't some scientist just connect animals to EEG, and show them some movies, then compare it with reactions of human brain.

The book is a very thorough and objective scientific overview of the discipline, and I'm glad I've read it.

[Jasmine Hardie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Donald Griffin was a brilliant scientist and possessed a very sharp mind, but he certainly was no great writer. Animal Minds is an incredibly dry and trying read and made reading on a subject that is of great interest to me feel like a chore. I give this book two stars in recognition of Griffin's theoretical contributions to the study of animal behaviour. Were I to rate this book on enjoyment or quality of writing alone, it would not even warrant that.

[Vasha7 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Revised edition. An argument in favor of the idea that consciousness in some form may be present throughout the animal kingdom.

As I read this book, I found myself very frustrated by it. The one huge problem that permeates it is the refusal to come to grips, even provisionally, with what is consciousness in the first place. To be sure, this is an issue no one has settled yet. But Griffin writes in accordance with this quote from Francis Crick: "Everyone has a rough idea of what is meant by consciousness. It is better to avoid a precise definition of consciousness because of the dangers of premature definitions." I do not agree that "everyone" has even a "rough idea" of what they mean when they talk of consciousness -- this assumption allows people to perhaps talk right past each other, and change their definitions in unpredictable ways during the course of discussion. Certainly I had that impression many times as I read Animal Minds.

Griffin's arguments are just not as careful as I would wish. He starts out by stating "It seems likely that conscious thinking and emotional feeling about current, past, and anticipated events is the best way to cope with some of the more critical challenges faced by animals in their natural lives." (p. 3) But he does not justify that statement in the following paragraph. And throughout the book he continues to hold that assumption, largely unstated. He introduces many and varied examples of behavior by all sorts of animals, will give a little discussion of interpretations, then state that consciousness is either a possible explanation, or the most likely explanation -- then simply move on to the next example. A few of the instances he cites seemed to me quite poorly chosen. The idea of consciousness seems more plausible to me in some of his examples than others, but he never really rigorously justifies himself in any case. The whole book adds up to a suggestive, but weak, argument; and he spends a lot of time criticizing other people who've written on the subject in terms that suggest to me that he's not being entirely fair to them.

On the upside, the book provides plenty of references for further reading, plus accounts of some fascinating research. My favorite was Cowey and Stoerig's experiments on blindsight in monkeys. Monkeys which have had their visual cortex surgically damaged can press a lever indicating the presence of a lighted square with some accuracy; but, if they have been trained to press a lever when a lighted square is not present, they will , when surgically blinded, invariably indicate that there is no square. So, there is a way in which these monkeys see and don't see at the same time. In human blindsight patients, the sense in which they don't see is known as conscious awareness. Should the same name be applied to what produces the same output in monkeys? Intriguing...

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was really interesting and held my attention about 3/4 of the way through and then got repetitive and boring. I couldn't finish it. I'm hoping to pick it up again one of these days but right now I can't handle the dry research info. It's about animal consciousness and I loved the parts of the book talking about some of the amazing stories of animals doing things unexplained by anything other than thinking conscious thoughts but got bored later with the more theoretical and specific parts of conscious thought in animals.

[Catherine Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book touched base alot on the animal mind and the very strong connection between their intelleigence and their behavior. this book opened my eyes to considering behavior as an important variable when thinking about the intellectual ability and capacity of an animal. After reading this book i realized there was alot more to the animal mind than i had originally had thought. there is alot about animal emotions linked to an animal's behavior and the link and effect one has on another.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the first books to openly challenge what for years had been a dogmatic, deeply entrenched idea in cognitive science: that humans are the only animals whose mental experiences can be classified as 'consciousness'. Griffin put out this revised, updated edition of the original book just before he died, and it's a great read for anyone interested in animal consciousness.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book that discussed the various cognitive ability of animals. From consciousness to intelligence, this book gathers information on variousresearches that has been done on animals. He usse by famous examples of animals such as Alex the Gray African parrot. it is a wonderful book that summaries the current development of animal intelligence and emotions. Worth reading.

[Deb Stransky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in 1992--a little out-dated. I have read more recent books re: this topic and they referred to this author/behaviorist so I wanted see his works. Liked the book a lot. Actually thought animals had minds and could think---monkeys using stones to open up nuts, animals using various vocals to warn others of what kind of danger is approaching, etc.