That would be a command.
Did you read the rest of my post?
It would be a new command that had not been taught by repitition. It would be a command introducing a new concept. It would show that dogs can reason from perviously understood concepts to new ones. Are you suggesting that it would be insufficient to prove understanding of words as abstract concepts? I am willing to accept a more stringent one.
Yes. Can you point me to the part I seem to have missed? Thanks.
Boy, that’s true. Dogs definitely vary in their comprehension skills. My sister used to have a German Shepherd mix (may he rest in peace - what a great dog) that was incredibly smart. He knew a bunch of words, but the amazing thing was, he could understand conversational English. So, yes, he would lay down when given the command “down”, but he would also lay down if you said something along the lines of “Hey Bear, you’re driving me crazy with that panting - go lay down or something”.
I have two beagles now, and one of them is smart (and devious) and the other one is just dumb as a stump. Although they both know some words, a lot of our “communication” does depend on my tone or other cues. I’ve noticed (with the help of the hounds) that I do a quick little breath intake just as I say “Do you want . . .”, and this tiny intake and lip parting really makes them pay attention. They’ve learned that means dinner or a walk or sinkie ball sesson is in the offing.
That anecdote, as stated, is at best evidence for his response to the command “down”; there is no indication whatsoever that he understood conversations spoken in English. Get him to lie down without using the word “down” or any other word that he has been conditioned to respond to, and you may have something.
I suspect that no example any dog owner gives will change Contrapuntal’s opinion on the matter of how words are processed in a dog’s brain. There is a level of complexity desired in the test that most dogs could not satisfy, but does not prove the absence of abstract thought.
When I am unable to fulfill my promise of a visit to the dog park on Saturday, and tell my dog that we’ll go tomorrow, she stops “asking.” When we wake up on Sunday, she’s very expectant. To me, this is my dog understanding an abstract concept.
When I ask my dog if she wants to go see mom, she will look for my mother-in-law wherever I take her, and give me a WTF? look if she’s not there. To me, this is my dog connecting a sound to a specific person. This is a finite concept, and not a command.
Honestly and without cynicism, how would you interpret these instances? Do you think my interpretation is flawed? How so?
That is an unfair characterization. For you to assume that I am close-minded from one exchange suggests that you are too willing to make asumptions on scant evidence.
We are not trying to prove the absence of abstract thought. That would be far too difficult. Can you prove that a housefly is incapable of abstract tought?
We are tryng to prove that dogs can understand words as abstract concepts. Quite a different thing
I guess I would need you to prove that a dog understands the concept “promise,” to tell me how you can tell she is “asking” something and how that is distinct from other behavior, and to tell me how you know she is “expectant.” You are assuming the premise in attempting to prove it. It’s a logical flaw referred to as “begging the question.”
How do know she is looking for your mother-in-law? What is it about her behavior that precludes her from looking for anything else?
See above.
P.S.
I am a dog owner. A casual reading of this thread would have made that obvious.
I would tend to interpret the dog’s actions as reading body language again. When he begged the day before, there was a “finality” in your answer that told him from experience that when you speak in that tone, you’re not going to change your mind. In the morning, YOU are anticipating going to the park-- either you’re happy about it or just plain dutiful, but he can detect the sense of purpose with which you get out of bed.
The dog could be thinking: “The fur-less male just asked me something. He’s looking at me expectantly. Ohhh, what does he want? What should I do?” You’re *expecting *that he’ll be confused and it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In a sense, everything is a command. Your dog learns what behaviors please you and do them even without being verbally told to do so.
One of my dogs loved to chew on socks when she was a puppy. She was very timid, so I had to use a postive-only training method with her. So, when I saw her chewing on a sock, I would tell her to drop it, and then praise her when she did, giving her something else to chew on as a distraction. Her little doggy mind computed this into “The fur-less female likes it when I bring her socks and drop them at her feet.” She doesn’t chew on socks any more-- she steals them from the laundry basket and brings them to me because those actions always got her praise and a treat.She also has learned “cute” postures which make me smile and rub her belly when she does them. I guess you could say that she has trained me.
So, when a dog dances when it hears the word “cheese” or “park” it has learned when you say that word and give them an expectant look, they will get at least a smile and possibly food if they respond. The dog has also learned that the word “bath” and the unconcious tension in the human means an unpleasant dousing in hideous-smelling shampoo, and it tries to go and hide.
I apologize for taking you for just one more of the many anti-dog people I’ve met, both here and in person. I see that yours is a healthy, scientific skepticism.
I’ll try and keep this brief.
I have two dogs. Kirin is a Shiba Inu and is a clever little girl, but I haven’t really seen behavior in her that would indicate abstract though beyond the lateral thinking used in problem solving.
Bailey shows more complex attempts at communication. If we don’t respond properly to one bark or yodel, she’ll try another. You’ll have to take my word for it that the begging and barking is noticeably different when the dog park is mentioned. The desire for a simple potty-walk is expressed with what I’d describe as a frustrated growl/whimper. When I say “promise” I mean only I tell her we’re going. She will then pace near the door, beg, lay sphinx-like and stare at me. She’ll do these things at other times, but not together and her desire for going lends an impatient quality to them. She won’t stop until we go, unless…
We tell her “tomorrow.” In that case, she’ll settle down and start again the next day. I should also note that she does not beg for the dog park on her own volition, only when offered.
As for knowing names, “mom” means my MIL, as I stated. It is clear to me when Bailey is searching for her, she doesn’t look in the bushes, she’ll check out people until she finds her. In a more complex case, Frisco, my parent’s Golden Retriever, will go to a named family member wherever they may be in the house if told to. It’s not a process of elimination, either. If the wrong person is in a checked room, he’ll move on to the next one without going inside the room.
I guess my ultimate point is that individual stories can be written off, but as a whole, my dog understands certain things at a higher level than action-response-reward. It’s OK if you don’t believe this, but don’t accuse me of anthropomorphizing my pet. I find it insulting.
Excuse me. I have to go walk my dogs now.
I believe there is some debate about how well dogs can understand the actual phonemes rather than just tone. I’ve praised and scolded dogs in German and Vietnamese as an experiment, and they’ve acted the same as when I’ve done it in English.
My personal opinion is that they understand individual sounds to a certain extent, but maybe not as well as being able to distinguish “ride in the car” from “slide in the bar”. It’s quite telling that sled dogs are given commands for such things as “left” and “right” that are nonsense words to we humans (and they’re not barking sounds either) but are sounds which are deliberately as distinct as possible. One might be a rapid clicking with lots of harsh ‘K’ sounds, and the other might be a smooth ‘S’-dominant sound.
[hijack]
My WAG on this is that for dogs, smell is sort of like our vision; it gives them information. Smell gives humans information, too, but not very detailed info, and we seem to mostly sort it into good/bad type categories. I don’t think dogs do this. In the same way we might say “that’s an ugly painting” but it wouldn’t really bother us to look at it, a dog can smell a “bad” smell without being offended. Now, the things they actually eat…no defending that. [/hijack]
I believe that they’re most attuned to the sounds that dogs can make. Thus, they probably pick out the long “e” sound, the “ow” sounds out of our words, or notice them better than sounds they’re not capable of making.
The same is sort of true with humans. If someone says a word to me in a foreign language, I’ll try to repeat it, but I might not manage to get out the proper vowel sounds or mixes of sounds that I’m not used to-- i.e, my repetition might be a little garbled. In a sense, I can “hear” it just fine, and I’m certainly capable of making those sounds, but my brain doesn’t process them as quickly as it would with an English word.
Hey, my dogs are my life. Really. I work, and I come home and hang with my homies.
That is all well and good, but, again, the question on the table is whether dogs understand words as abstract concepts, not whether dogs can communicate through barking and growling.
If she understands the concept “tomorrow” then she would understand it in a comletely different context, rather than the end of a string of behaviors that she associates with going out. All this anecdote suggests is that “tomorrow” means “no” when she performs her door ritual. Tell her to look for your MIL ‘tomorrow’ and see what she does.
This is going to be difficult to get through if you answer questions I have not asked. Where did I say anything about knowing names?
Does your dog only check out people when you have mentioned your MIL, or does she check out people rourinely on her walk?
Of course she stops when she finds her. She recognizes a friend.
What is a checked room?
I have no quarrel with this, and ask you to show where I have stated differently. It has little to do, however, with (for the third time) whether dogs understand words as abstract concepts.
If you will show me where I have made such a accusation, I will gladly apologize.
I strongly urge you to read *The Culture Clash *, by Jean Donaldson, as well as Don’t Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor. They will open yopur eyes about the way that dogs learn, behave, mimic, and respond to humans.
Gorgeous dogs, by the way. Three of mine are Jack Russells, who are also among the “smart” breeds. I don’t believe that they understand English, however.
Let me add that In talk to my dogs in complete English sentences. “Who wants a biscuit”? “Want to watch a movie?” “OK dumbasses, breakfast!” “Let’s go outside!”
I am a bit of a hermit. And slightly misanthropic.
I have seen a dog demonstrate the ability to find any person in the household in response to the question “Where is <person’s name>?” The same dog will either bring the person (gently take hand in mouth and lead) or just find them, and return, depending on whether the question is “Where is?” or “Go get” the person named. A long list of objects can also be brought, but not found, and that is a response for "Get the, <object>. “Where is the <object>?” will get the same response.
The dog is also the only dog I ever saw who asks for his meals. He brings his food dish to you, and puts it down. (Well, he does it if you live there, although not strangers.) If you tell him “<person> has it.” He will take the bowl to <person>. There are at least six humans whose name the dog knows, and a generic person, “Baby” that means any non ambulatory age child.
Interestingly, the dog will not “Go get the baby.” He will find the baby, sit with the baby, guard the baby, watch the baby, and a few other things, but the dog will not take any part of the baby, or its clothes in his mouth. If the baby cries, the dog, except when guarding the baby will go directly to the person who gave the order, and bark. When guarding anything or anyone, the dog will not leave the thing/person, nor allow anyone but its family members to touch the thing/person. (Very convincing growls, and teeth.)
The dog was 5 years old when I met him, and has probably passed away by now. (It has been fifteen years since I last saw him, and that was several years after I met him.) The family that owned him was very much into animal training, and considered him the smartest dog they knew. He stood at stud fairly often, but the family did not want to show him. (Great big Black Labrador, and beautiful, as well as smart.)
I do not own dogs. I am not a liar. I am not an idiot. I am a professional in the matter of remedial language acquisition, and this dog understands grammar within limits, and has a vocabulary of at least 80 words, perhaps 200 at the most.
Unlike my friends, I don’t think this is the smartest dog, but rather the most consistently trained dog I ever met. Everyone in the family spoke to the dog, and did so in the same way as they spoke to each other. At five, he had the vocabulary and receptive language abilities of a two year old human, and far more discrimination within that vocabulary.
Quibbles about rote learning are entirely out of fantasy. Humans learn language by rote learning. Although humans are inherently able to go beyond that to synthetic construction based on existing vocabulary, that is a matter much different than simple learning of language.
Tris
With regards to synonyms for “walk”, it’s certainly possible that posture, tone, and other non-linguistic cues were involved to some degree. But we weren’t necessarily talking to the dog, and when we didn’t want him to go hyper (we generally didn’t), we made an effort to not use the same inflections, etc. as when talking to him. It’s also telling that he took a while to learn each new synonym: If it were just that we were using the same tone of voice when we said any walk-word, then he would have reacted instantly to “hike”, rather than being fooled for a while.
On the question of stimulus-response, of course it’s a response to a stimulus. There’s no debate about that. It’s just a question of how complicated the stimulus and the response to it can be.
For the record - as if anyone is making one - I am not antidog nor prodog, although I am a major dog lover. I’ve had dogs, or as I like to think of them, dorgs, most of my life. I have raised just about all of the dogs I’ve had in my life except the one who raised me. They varied in intelligence from those that I’d call pretty bright for a dog to those who were lovable, but who had the general intelligence of mayonaise. Nonetheless, I would say that the brightest of them had only limited ability to make real sense out of our language. It is, after all, quite complex and essentially symbolic. I do not for one moment, believe that a dog can comprehend the concept of tomorrow, nor, can it keep such concept in “mind” for several hours and then act on that concept after the sun has risen and tomorrow has turned into today. Rememeber that it takes a human many years of development to get to this stage. To assert that an animal can do this is too much. Such contentions, without as much as a shred of evidence, amount to pseudoscience at best. Love your dog, man, but don’t pretend he’s any more than an animal. One other thing - remember the story of Clever Hans? Damned horse could count to I don’t know how many - 15 or twenty. Could add or subtract. No one could figure out how he did it. Turned out he was picking up subtle, unconscious cues from his owner. Same deal with your dog. He isn’t smart - he’s a sensitive animal.
There is nothing in your post that is inconsistent with the dog understanding a series of commands. The true test of whether he understands words as abstract concepts is to put them together in a way that is new to him, and see if he understands that.
I say that counts. It pretty much would for me, if one time you said, “I want to fuck you” and then you followed up by fucking me, but the next time you said, “I want to yuck fou”.
Sorry, but Monster Inc., immediately comes to mind. How cute! 
At our house, it’s the dog who rushes to find the cat - I think she believes that the cat is to blame for all bad things.