HACKER Q&A
📣 lowdose

Does your dog have a theory of mind?


Recently my dog has found a new level trick to get the playing going. He basically goes to another part of the house pushes that door closed and waits behind it until we discover him. All while making sounds, peaking behind the door, closing and opening it again and again. This is 100% playful behavior but on Google I only find explanation of anxiety and stress related causes. I hesitate to interpret this as intelligent behavior and project a theory of mind on it but it sure is a nice surprise.


  👤 rl3 Accepted Answer ✓
My dog has been known to be more perceptive and cunning than humans at times (including me), so I'd have to say yes.

It ultimately depends on the breed, upbringing, the dog's individual personality, and so on. Generally speaking however, there's a mountain of empirical evidence that demonstrates how extraordinary canine intelligence can be.

Humans have a rather long history of discounting other species' intelligence, and it seems as time progresses we learn just how wrong we were. I was reading an article the other day about how turtles of all species are actually much more intelligent than previously thought, in part due to flawed behavioral studies in the 1950s and 60s. They aren't even mammals. It makes one wonder:

I eat meat. I enjoy it. If anything I'm aware of how unethical it is, but I currently rationalize its consumption partly as a tacit acknowledgement of how dark and broken the world is, and partly for nutritional and cognitive health reasons.

Yet, it's still terrifying to think that if you remove the notion of humans being unique in our ability to experience suffering—not only physical pain, but notably psychological pain—we're essentially inflicting what amounts to large-scale genocide of creatures with feelings, on a daily basis. It's suffering on a scale that is incomprehensible.

To circle back to the topic at hand, it's curious that consumption of canine meat is considered highly immoral or more commonly is outright illegal in the majority of the civilized world. Yet, use of other mammals as livestock—mammals who arguably exceed canine intelligence in many instances—is widely accepted.

I think that dissonance underscores just how badly we've failed in recognizing intelligence beyond that of our own species. Intelligence, the capacity for suffering, sentience—it all has been unduly anthropomorphized.