There probably isn’t just one thing we’re referring to when we talk about intelligence – and the best way to define the term might depend on our goals in asking the question. But that raises a tricky question: what is it all about? That’s a difficult question. More generally, we should be cautious about thinking that this kind of learning is what intelligence is all about. So, we should not be too quick to draw conclusions about intelligence from an animal’s success in learning through operant conditioning. For at least some of them, taking the lamp down from above the tank and hauling it back to the den – that is more interesting. ‘Rats and pigeons will do things like that, but octopuses tend to lose interest. Godfrey-Smith suggests that in this case, ‘the assumption that an octopus would be interested in pulling a lever repeatedly to get pieces of sardine,’ was at least partly to blame. In an early study on octopus learning, one octopus would repeatedly break or steal the equipment and squirt jets of water at experimenters. This apparent mismatch may have its roots in a failure of experiments to tap into octopus motivation. For instance, some octopuses seem to figure out quite quickly that they can put out the bright lights in an aquarium by squirting jets of water at them. Godfrey-Smith writes that whilst in experimental settings, octopuses seem to be rather slow learners, this fits poorly with their behaviour in other scenarios. Octopuses illustrate this point nicely, as Peter Godfrey-Smith notes in his book Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life. More generally, we should be cautious about thinking that this kind of learning is what intelligence is all about" "We should not be too quick to draw conclusions about intelligence from an animal’s success in learning through operant conditioning. In any case, it’s not obvious that any of these traits indicate a lack of intelligence. They might be insufficiently motivated by the reward, find the repetition frustrating, or simply be uninterested in what the trainer is up to. After all, it’s not as though we think that a child must be especially intelligent when we successfully reinforce her good behaviour through the award of gold stars.Īs well as this, there are any number of reasons an animal might not succeed in learning the trick. This might be a component of intelligence, but it can’t be all there is to it. To learn a trick in this way involves latching on to the contingency between act and consequence – ‘figuring out’ just what behaviour the reward is tied to. The tricks are taught using operant conditioning – when the animal performs the desired behaviour, they get a reward which ‘positively reinforces’ the behaviour. If one pet takes to the trick much faster than the other, it can be tempting to say that the first is more intelligent. The pets might be dogs, cats, miniature horses, even chickens or pigs. In each episode, two different pets are compared on their ability to learn a trick, like answering the doorbell or wiping their feet on a mat. This interest in ‘trainability’ is reflected in the British television show Teach My Pet To Do That. But quite often, what people mean by this is that individuals of that breed are very obedient and can be trained to perform many tasks. Similarly, you sometimes hear people say that a particular breed of dog is highly intelligent. But it strikes me that there is something very odd about the idea that eating on a regular schedule and enjoying a varied diet have anything to do with intelligence, as we usually understand that term. Now, I have no idea how seriously this book is intended to be taken. The second is whether it eats a variety of foods. The first question is whether the cat eats on a regular schedule. Using the book, you score your cat on a variety of questions, perform a calculation, and this gives you the cat’s IQ. He or she might be an ‘undiscovered genius’. How smart is your pet? The book Test Your Cat: The Cat IQ Test claims to be able to tell you ‘how smart your cat really is’.
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