My Dog Has and Uses Concepts and Believes that x is F: a Reply to Fred Dretske

Concepts, according to Dretske, can be very basic:

One can…see armadillos without seeing that they are armadillos, but perhaps one must…see that they are (say) animals of some sort…in seeing an object [one must] see that it is an object of some sort. To be aware of a thing is at least to be aware that it is…how shall we say it?…a thing. Something or other [Dretske, 1993]

In the above, Dretske is getting down to bottom-line concepts. And to argue that animals don’t have such concepts, which Dretske does, is to my mind very strange. If we insist on seeing concepts as exclusively sentence-based or linguistic, in any vague sense, then we by definition exclude animals from concept-use. Such a position is both seemingly arbitrary and not necessary.

Here is Dretske making a distinction between awareness of facts and awareness of things:

Consciousness of facts implies a deployment of concepts. If S is aware that x is F, then S has the concept F and uses (applies) it [to x]… awareness of things (x) requires no fact-awareness (that x is F, for any F) of those things…there is no reasonably specific property F which is such that an awareness of a thing which is F requires fact-awareness that it is F.

All the above amounts to is to state that animals, or a particular animal, hasn’t got our concept of x (e.g., [human]) - but it may have its own. The concept [human] may be based on sentential constructions, whereas an animal’s concept [c] may be based on, or partly made-up of, say, mental images.

How can an animal be aware of a thing, x, without concepts which differentiate or individuate it? How can it be aware of x, qua x, without the application of conceptual criteria of identity? Doesn’t individuation and application of conceptual criteria of identity entail, or at least imply, Dretske’s “fact-awareness”? Of course the short schema “that P” is not strictly applicable to animals if it is seen exclusively as a linguistic formulation or a strict logical schema. But need concepts and factual awareness be linguistic or sentential in form? Indeed couldn’t there be a non-linguistic version of - or alternative to - that P (just as there are non-linguistic propositions)? Can we really distinguish “awareness of things” from “awareness of facts”? Perhaps things are facts, or, at least, they are made up of facts/concepts.

My parents’ dog is called “Joe”. It is aware of a thing, Paul Murphy, by being aware, non-linguistically, that P (i.e., that x, in front of it, is Paul Murphy). Of course he doesn’t know me as “Paul Murphy”; but my human neighbour doesn’t know me as “Paul Murphy” either.

Dretske seems to be saying that unless one knows that P, or a non-formal but still linguistic version of it, then one has no “fact-awareness”. This is reminiscent of Descartes’ exclusion of animals from rationality and thought because they didn’t speak French (or, more fairly, because they didn’t speak any human language):

…it has never yet been observed that any animal has arrived as such a degree of perfection as to make use of a true language; that is to say, as to be able to indicate to us by the voice…anything which could be referred to thought alone, rather than to a movement of mere nature; for the word is the sole sign and the only certain mark of the presence of thought… (pg 12)

Dretske himself says as much. He writes that the

cat can smell, and thus be aware of, burning toast as well as the cook, but only the cook will be aware that the toast is burning.

That last clause is indeed correct. Who would or could doubt it? The cat will not think to itself or say that “the toast is burning” – perhaps not even in its own animal language (if it has one). But it may have its own concept [b] for burning, and its own concept for toast, [t], and even its own molecular concept of toast burning [bt].

The implication also is that the cat is aware that the toast is burning, but not “fact-aware” that the toast is burning. Of course the cat isn’t aware that the toast is burning in the sense of thinking

the toast is burning.

in English, in French, or in any language (even its own), but it might be fact-aware of something. This can be explained in this way. The cat isn’t aware that “the toast is burning”; but it is aware that the toast is burning (We can say that it is aware of the proposition but not its expression in a human natural language.)

Despite all the above, Dretske himself says, at the beginning of this paper, that “I do not know about animals”. He may not know about animals in the plural, but he seems to know about the cat in his example.

If image-like concepts can “pick out a kind”, or are “of a given kind” [Loar, 1990], then perhaps animals can not only pick out an x or x, they can also believe that x is F (or that P). In a sense, an animal needs to think that x is F in order to distinguish x from, say, y. Of course the belief that x is F will not be sentential, linguistic, or even formal or quasi-linguistic. But why should it be? Why is it necessary to believing x is F that it is, as it were, a linguistic by-product?

Take Joe, my parents’ dog. I am x to Joe. I am an individuated object to it. That much, surely, must be uncontroversial. How does it individuate and differentiate me from, say, y (say, another person or even an inanimate table)? It may do so by believing that x is F (or x, not y, is F). It may believe that this object in front of it is Paul Murphy. However, Joe is still applying a concept, [p], to a reoccurrence of x (Paul Murphy). The concept [p] is being applied to x; therefore for Joe x is F. I will need to backtrack here.

The concept [p], or [Paul Murphy], may be an agglomeration of atomic concepts: [a certain smell,] [certain clothes], [a certain voice], etc., plus, perhaps more importantly, a concept-image (a mental image used as a kind of concept). So x is F, for Joe the dog, means that it applies, or has already applied, the image-concept [i], plus various atomic conceptual criteria of identity, including smells, dress, etc., to x, which is a re-occurrence of the object my family, but not the dog, calls “Paul Murphy”. Therefore the variable x is not identical to the dog-concepts of x. The concepts [P] are applied or belong to object x. For Joe, therefore, x is (indeed) F.

Even language-users may use and have such non-linguistic or non-sentential concepts. When I think that

Tony Blair is a liar (i.e., x is F)

I don’t need to express

“Tony Blair is a liar”

or even sub-vocally say to myself “Tony Blair is a liar”. The belief, that P, has more than a single logical form or particular sentential expression (by virtue, for one, of its relations to other connected – and perhaps unconnected – beliefs). x is F is also conceptual (it can’t help being so). The concept is [Blair being a liar] or [the lying Blair], etc. It need not even be based or reliant upon other sentential formulations like “You know Tony Blair sometimes lies” or “The Prime Minister is a dissembler”. However, the concept, or belief, need not be abstract either. There’s nothing more real (to me) than my mental image of Tony Blair and also my mental image of Tony Blair lying. However, lying itself, admittedly, is necessarily linguistic. I don’t think Joe, or any animal, could think that Tony Blair, or anyone or anything else for that matter, is a liar. Lying comes with language (though not deception – animals practice deception). (Perhaps even here I’m being too strict and anthropocentric in my restrictions on lying.)

I’m not saying anything in the above that is very surprising. There are some human concepts that animals not only don’t have but also couldn’t have. And not just beliefs like believing that 4+4=8, but far more mundane and basic ones. What of a semi-complex beliefs/concept like [forests are full of trees]?

My dog-“translation” of

Forests are full of trees.

wouldn’t be an exact translation in the way, say, that “I love you” can be translated into French. But so what? Animals, we don’t need to be told, aren’t fellow human beings like the French. But a dog’s version of “Forests are full of trees” may come close, if only in a few respects, to our concept or belief. And, in any case, why would we require or need an exact equivalent or translation? We don’t need one to argue our case. The point is that the dog’s version, or alternative, would still be conceptual. It could also be, by inference, a belief. And it could even be, in a sense, an example or version of a predicate attached to a noun. Of course we would need non-linguistic interpretations or equivalents of our predicates and nouns. That’s not a problem; we have them in philosophy. The sentential predicate “are full of trees” could have as its extension some kind of property or attribute of forests. The noun “forests” could become some kind of non-linguistic subject (or object).  Indeed Frege, for one, thought that predicates were concepts (just as others thought that concepts are universals).

We’ve now reached bedrock. All I am saying is that something, or some things, must come before our linguistic expressions. Our linguistic expressions don’t occur ex nihilo.  Here’s Paul Churchland making related points:

…language use is something that is learned, by a brain already capable of vigorous cognitive activity; language use is acquired as only one among a great variety of learned manipulative skills; and it is mastered by a brain that evolution has shaped for a great many functions, language using being only the very latest and perhaps the least of them. Against the background of these facts, language use appears as an extremely peripheral activity, as a species-specific mode of social interaction which is mastered thanks to the versatility and power of a more basic mode of activity. Why accept, then, a theory of cognitive activity that models its elements on the elements of human language?

I believe that certain animals have beliefs and concepts even though I also believe that language and linguistic concepts utterly shape human thought and experience.

Joe’s x is F could be even more abstract. It could be x (i.e., Paul Murphy) is an F (i.e., a human being). Need I stress again that F, that is the dog-concept [h], need not be our concept [human being]? But Joe may have some concept or concepts of a human being or of what we call “human beings”. It may notice that we only have two legs; that we don’t sniff each other’s backsides; that we smell a certain way (i.e., unlike them). Even these atomic concepts of the molecular concept [human being] would need to be “translated” into atomic dog-concepts.

Joe “picks out a kind” [Loar, 1990] - the kind human beings call “human beings”. More correctly, he picks out a particular (say, Jim) and sees that it/he belongs to the kind we call, but it doesn’t, “human beings”. At no stage of the game am I saying that Joe’s x is F is identical to our x is F. It may still be structural, but not linguistic or sentential. It may even have a similar structure to ours in some broad sense.

In any case, how close must Joe’s x is F be to our x is F? More relevantly, why do we demand an exact parallel with our x is F in order to allow ourselves the ascription of concepts and group of concepts (beliefs) to Joe?

Many Europeans didn’t think that 18^th century central African tribesmen had rationality (or even concepts, etc.) in a way they didn’t have rationality simply because they didn’t speak English or French and they were a different colour. (Think here of Descartes.) Of course 18^th century central African tribesmen were far more intellectually advanced than any animal, but these points still hold. The Europeans demanded exactitude or complete identity from the tribesmen in order to ascribe rationality - and who knows what else - to them. It’s no wonder that some contemporary philosophers are looking for exact equivalences between themselves and other animals in order to allow animals the privilege of having concepts and beliefs. (It is, dare I say, a kind of chauvinism similar in spirit to that which the functionalists of mind detected in the 1960s when they said to other philosophers of mind that minds, qua minds, need not share human neurobiology in order to be minds.)

One mustn’t get the wrong impression from all the above. I don’t really think that animals are very clever vis-à-vis human beings. Not even dolphins or apes. And I don’t want to say (here) whether or not these conclusions have any impact on what is often called “animal issues” let alone on “animal rights”. My claim is very simple:

Certain animals do have concepts and beliefs.

It is as narrow as that. I’m prepared to say that Dretske’s reasonings are not conscious chauvinism. They may be examples of unconscious chauvinisms or anthropocentrism toward non-linguistic concepts and therefore animal thought itself.

References

Churchland, P – (1981) ‘Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes’, in Journal of Philosophy, LXXVIII, 2

Descartes – (1649) Letter to Henry More

Dretske, F – (1993) ‘Conscious Experience’, Mind

Loar, B – (1990) ‘Phenomenal States’, Philosophical Perspectives, ed. J. Tomberlin, Vol. 4 , 81-108