discussion 3860

Write a paragraph on the following —

Do you now own (or did you grow up around) a pet? Did you anthropomorphize your pet with many of your own emotions? Why is it so easy to anthropomorphize a horse, a dog, or a cat; but not a goldfish or a pet snake? Anthropomorphic definition, ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing not human. A behaviorist would never anthropomorphize anything.

This is the professors response ** What does this have to do with behaviorism? The idea that we give our pets attributes of “mind” is something that a behaviorist would never do.. Regardless, the question is DO dogs and cats have minds? Or are they animals hat don’ think.

For years I argued only humans can reason, think, and make inferences. We are different.

However, a fairly recent article in Current Trends Psychological Science from 2016 convinced me otherwise.

According to lots of scientific evidence, dogs seem to be able to take our perspective and predict our behavior. The research gets technical fairly quickly. But dogs can read our expressions, decode our emotions, and sometimes even figure out what we will do in novel situations. These are parts of the technical criteria for demonstrating that you have a mind. They can do this WITHOUT BEING TAUGHT.

Dogs can also learn by watching also dogs, which is truly amazing.

Cats, on the other hand, who knows? They are like teenagers. They just aren’t motivated. They might well be smarter than us. But we will never know it. They are too busy being cats. ***