How should researchers endeavour to investigate non-human intelligence? The picture higher upwards raises hard questions. The octopus is ...
How should researchers endeavour to investigate non-human intelligence? The picture higher upwards raises hard questions. The octopus is manipulating (tenticlating?) the Rubik's cube. But at that topographic point are a raft of questions that are hard to resolve on the footing of unproblematic inductive observation. And around of those questions are equally much conceptual equally they are empirical. Is the octopus "attempting to solve the cube"? Does it empathise the destination of the puzzle? Does it pick out a mental representation of a work which it is task to solve? Does it pick out temporally extended intentionality? How does octopus consciousness compare to human consciousness? (Here is a overnice website past times several biologists at Reed College on the dependent of octopus cognition; link.)
An octopus-consciousness theorist mightiness offering a few hypotheses:
- The organism possesses a cognitive representation of its environs (including the object nosotros advert to equally "Rubik's cube").
- The organism possesses curiosity -- a behavioral disposition to manipulate the environs as well as expose the effects of manipulation.
- The organism has a cognitive framework encompassing the thought of drive as well as effect.
- The organism has desires as well as intentions.
- The organism has beliefs close the environment.
- The organism is witting of itself inside the environment.
One resources that the cephalopod behaviour theorist has is the powerfulness to expose octopi inward their ordinary life environments as well as inward laboratory conditions. These observations found a rich trunk of information close behavioral capacities as well as dispositions. For example:
Here nosotros appear to encounter the organism conveying a tool (coconut shell) to endure used for an of import role afterwards (concealment) (link). This behaviour seems to imply several cognitive states: recognition of the physical characteristics of the shell; recognition of the utility those characteristics may pick out inward around other setting; as well as a programme for concealment. The behaviour also seems to imply a capacity for learning -- adapting behaviour past times incorporating knowledge learned at an before time.
Another tool available to the cephalopod theorist is controlled experimentation. It is possible to show the perceptual, cognitive, as well as motor capacities of the organism past times designing unproblematic experimental setups inviting diverse kinds of behavior. The researcher tin enquire "what-if" questions as well as frame experiments that serve to answer them -- for example, what if the organism is separated from the trounce simply it remains inward view; volition the organism reaquire the shell?
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 tertiary tool available to the cephalopod researcher is the accumulated neuro-physiology that is available for the species. How does the perceptual organization work? What tin nosotros possess upwards one's withdraw heed close the cognitive organization embodied inward the organism's fundamental nervous system?
Finally, the researcher mightiness consult alongside philosophers working on the mind-body work for human beings, to canvass whether at that topographic point are useful frameworks inward that dependent champaign that mightiness contribute to octopus-mind-body studies. (Thomas Nagel's famous article, "What is it Like to Be a Bat?", comes to mind, inward which he walks through the difficulty of imagining the consciousness of a bat whose sensory the world depends on echo-location; link.)
In short, it seems that cephalopod knowledge is a inquiry champaign that necessarily combines detailed empirical inquiry alongside conceptual as well as theoretical framing; as well as the latter efforts ask equally much rigor equally the former.
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