Dogs definitely have Theory of Mind. There was a study done that placed a treat in a room where the dog was instructed not to eat it. A handler was in the room with the dog. When the lights were turned out, the dogs would eat the treat, because they knew that the human couldn't see in the dark.

Wouldn't another explanation be that the dog thought the human literally didn't exist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence

No, because the dog could smell and hear the human, just like they could smell the treat.

Haha, fair enough.

It's possible the human ceases to exist once the treat is present. The same thing happens to me when there's dessert next to the salad.

Frankly, as a parent of three I'm not at all convinced that human infants lack object permanence, much less adult dogs. I've never observed anything in my infants that would indicate they lost track of something's existence, and I've seen plenty of things that suggest the opposite.

See also the section of that article entitled "Contradicting evidence".

As a parent also, I think it simply varies from child to child. There is a point in time between vision developing and object permanence being learned where peek-a-boo is absolutely magic.

Peek-a-boo is a ton of fun with infants but I don't buy the explanation that it has to do with object permanence. At the same stage where peek-a-boo is hilarious my kids have also each been perfectly capable of watching me hide something and then going looking for it.

OT but maybe peekaboo works on the emotional tension and release of potential threats being revealed as friendly faces.

Or maybe it's just a fun game.

Or they tried the strategy in the past, and they had learned behavior that by eating things at night, they can get away with it. If you read the methods of this study, they used dogs that lived as pets [1].

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...

And how do you think humans acquire a theory of mind other than learning behaviors and figuring out what works and what doesn’t?

The question is one of what has been learned. It seems possible that an animal could learn, from experience, that outcomes can be different depending on whether it is light or dark, without developing any intuition as to why that might be so.

I'm all for the 'consciousness as a spectrum' view, but as TFA says, anyone looking for a eureka moment [in this matter] will be disappointed.

But sadly they dont have theory of rope.

Hilarious comment. Without fail, my neighbor's dog wraps himself around the tree within 30 minutes of being outside. It's been 2 years now, and he just can't get the hang of it.

Cats do the same thing if you take them outside on a leash. My cat is dumb enough to get tangled, but smart enough to know that I will guide her in reverse every time.

> just can't get the hang

pun intended?

Oddly, I’ve found that pit bulls won’t wrap themselves around a tree. We’ve had several in our house that are/were walked daily, and we volunteer at a dog shelter where my wife and I walk other pit bulls on a regular basis. There are exceptions, but my experience is that the vast majority will not let anything (like a tree) between themselves and their handler if on leash. Just when I think “ah, ha! You’re going to do it…”, they will course correct and go around to avoid trouble. It’s the oddest thing. I have never come up with a plausible theory, but it sure is nice.

(And it is not our dog handling, as our control groups are happy to wrap circles around a tree.)

I am not an pet owner. Are you saying that other breeds do this, but pit bulls are exceptional in this manner? If yes, do you have any thoughts why?

Yup, other breeds won’t pay attention, and get a signpost between themselves and their handler, and now the leash is stuck. And then they can’t figure out how to undo it. Pit bulls don’t do that. Why? I have no idea. I mean, I suppose you can breed for anything, but seems like a slightly odd feature to breed for.

I mean, I'm pretty sure rats also have a theory of mind. My data point is exactly one of the little buggers who used to be my pet. Whenever he was running around my room, he'd peek around to see if I was looking at him before jumping on the couch. If he couldn't see me, he'd jump. If he could, he wouldn't.

But most humans would have a more complex theory of the mind - they’d realise who would get the blame when the lights were turned back on.

> It's not clear to me that landing on the moon and discovering quantum mechanics require a different kind of mental process than building a beaver dam or discovering a use for medicinal herbs.

To the contrary, I do think landing on the moon and QM requires a different kind of mental process than a beaver.

However, the problem is that this implies that consciousness is a function of intelligence, and if only exceptional intelligence is sufficient evidence of consciousness, then would less intelligent people be considered having no consciousness, just like animals?

If one entertains the additional argument in the form of "all humans are the same, and some are shown to be smart (spaceships, QM, etc), thus all humans are conscious", then the question becomes why don't we apply the logic to all animals/mammals/apes, since it's clear the biologically we are constructed with the same parts?

My cat can’t comprehend code written on my screen and the world that is internet. Maybe other being exists and our notion of intelligence would collapse the same way a cat can’t possibly understand what internet is. Compared to them, would we be conscious beings ? Would they consider us conscious beings ?

>My cat can’t comprehend code written on my screen and the world that is internet.

My grandma is the same.

Your grandma can comprehend but maybe don’t want to. We know humans are equipped with what’s needed to comprehend. Or maybe some humans might never comprehend some things and it raises the question : « does all humans have the same consciousness ? ».

My take is organic breathing = consciousness. There may be different levels of it. Otherwise it’s like trying to say all colors can be trimmed down to two values, black and white. There is a variety of consciousness and the definition we try to make of it orient the whole debate. It will never be the same between humans and animals but it doesn’t mean because it’s not human it doesn’t exists.