If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness

by Stephen Budiansky

Book Overview

How many of us have caught ourselves gazing into the eyes of a pet, wondering what thoughts lie behind those eyes? Or fallen into an argument over which is smarter, the dog or the cat? Scientists have... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684837102
• ISBN13: 9780684837109
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Very much worthwhile, but contentious

This is a very slippery book on a very slippery subject. What Stephen Budiansky is trying to do is demonstrate from his reading of the literature, including experiments published in peer-reviewed journals, that there is a distinction to be made between the minds of humans and all other animals. Budiansky seems not to believe that intelligence and consciousness are matters of degree, but matters of threshold. Following philosopher Daniel Dennett he attributes this nearly absolute difference between us and them to our ability to use symbolic language. The reason the subject is so slippery is that an adequate definition of both intelligence and consciousness is lacking. The reason the book is contentious naturally follows from this, but additionally Budiansky seems to have an agenda or, call it a thesis. He writes: "Consciousness is a wonderful gift and a wonderful curse that, all the evidence suggests, is not in the realm of the sentient experiences of other creatures." (p. 194) How true or not his statement may be really depends on the definition of consciousness. Unfortunately Budiansky does not give one, and so all his conclusions about the differences in consciousness between humans and other creatures are murky at best. The closest he comes to a definition is on page 193 where he asserts that "...language is so intimately tied to consciousness that the two seem inseparable." Using this "definition" it is only a matter of demonstrating that animals do not have language in order to demonstrate that they don't have consciousness. However even in this I don't think Budiansky is successful. Much of the book is given over to showing how so many experiments using chimps and monkeys, pigeons and dogs, etc., that seem to demonstrate that language use by animals is just signaling. This position is well known. The argument is that humans are the only animals with grammatical, syntactical and symbolic ability built into their brains. Other animals cannot construct sentences because they have no syntax. They have no "theory of mind" because they cannot think symbolically. But this is not proven, as Budiansky acknowledges. What is obvious is that whatever language ability other animals have is rudimentary compared to that of humans. And almost everyone would agree that the consciousness demonstrated by animals varies considerably. By the way, here's a quick definition of consciousness: awareness, identify, and self-awareness. A lot of confusion results because when people talk about consciousness, one person may have in mind "awareness," while another may be talking about "self-awareness" only, or about "self-identity." Awareness includes past, present and future events, and places here and elsewhere. We are very good at all of this, whereas other creatures are apparently not so good at anything other than the here and now. Because of our extended awareness, people like Budiansky are persuaded that we are on a consciousness level ab

its a book, not a bible

I'm a bit shocked by the seeming backlash to this work. So much so I'm going to read it again. I read it about 6 months ago and thought it was a fine piece of work. I don't agree with all the authors conclusions, or even some of his definitions. But the book does one thing and it does it well. It points out clearly just how careful we have to be in trying to infer conclusions from experiments. We are all subject to little soundbites on the news about this new fact or other coming from science, and yet we get no background on the methodolgies employed to arrive at these pronouncements of truth, the personal biases of the researchers or who has funded the research in the first place. We are just encouraged to accept the new 'fact' and integrate it into our reptoire of knowledge. But as this book eloquently illustrates, if we shift perspective and rigourously subject the experimental methodology to the same degree of scientific scrutiny which we subject the phenomenon under the microscope we can often find that the results are less than definitive. In the Behavioural Sciences, this is of supreme importance if the discipline is to provide society with valuable contributions to the knowledge base. For example, to train an animal to provide a response and to include stimuli which we recognise as numbers in that process does not mean the animal has any conception of the concept of number whatsoever. It just means the training has been effective. Replace the numbers with pictures of random objects and repeat the experiment, are the results the same? If the animal can be trained to replicate the same behaviour in the absence of numerical stimuli, the 'evidence' that a rabbit can count evaporates. When I read his book, I sensed no 'agenda' which other reviewers are so vehemently convinced are the driving points of his motivation. Indeed I am forced to question if such emotionally driven responses to a simple book on general science are not the result of people being offended by his conclusions as opposed to being objective in their evaluation of the intent behind his work. If you work in the behavioural sciences I strongly recommend that before you design your next experiment, you read this book and ask yourself if the behavioural test you are intending to conduct is going to provide you with insight into the animals behaviour, on its terms, not ours. For the rest of us, if you have an objective interest in the application of the scientific method, then you'll find this book a damn good read. You may not agree with SB, but you will appreciate the efforts he has made and enjoy the insights which are contained. Take these and develop your own conclusions and avoid the trap of soapboxing just because someone elses views are not aligned with your own.

In Search of the Animal Mind

Stephen Budiansky begins this fascinating and mind-altering book by debunking a classic story of animal intelligence and near-human understanding. It's the 1996 account of the female gorilla in Chicago's Brookfield Zoo who picked up a little boy and protected him from other gorillas when he fell into their enclosure. As reported in the newspapers and shown on TV, the story made everyone believe that the gorilla had shown concern for the boy and, in a sense, made an inter-species contact, but it turns out that previously, prior to giving birth, she had been trained by her keepers in maternal care with a baby doll. As for the other gorillas, they were kept away from the scene of the accident by fire hoses shooting water at their feet. Budiansky's demolition of an appealing myth rudely challenges our consoling assumptions about animal behavior, intelligence and consciousness, and prepares us for a rigorous and unsentimental investigation of those very attributes. The title of the book comes from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." And Budiansky, in a careful survey of a wide range of research, shows how far we are from understanding the thinking of other animals--how anthropomorphic assumptions infect our testing of them in the lab, how human logic influences our observations of them in the field, how sentimental emotions govern our treatment of them in the home. Parsing out the differences, he advances the provocative hypothesis that all animals have basically the same intelligence working to satisfy their needs, only working through different anatomies and modalities, and so appearing unequal to us. The horse, the pigeon and the fish do equally well with what they've got---hoof, wing and fin; they eat, mate and get around with equal skill. We tend to rate their intelligence not by their performance in their own domain, but by how well they respond to us, or how human their actions appear. We set up IQ tests for them that favor human attributes: visual acuity, manual dexterity and problem solving with geometrical shapes. Or we teach them varieties of sign language, which feed back our own symbols to us and may mean nothing to them. Ultimately, no matter how refined the experiment, it seems impossible to get beyond the wall separating animals and man, chiefly because they do not speak and every experiment devised by man inserts the human element. A sort of biological uncertainty principle emerges in which the experimenter foils the experiment. Budiansky is left imagining that we are most like other species when we are performing but not talking to ourselves, enjoying the zen-state so desperately sought by hyper-conscious man. Animals, he concludes, have their own ways, their own dignity and beauty. (I saw no bashing of animal rights claimed by other reviewers.) He moves perhaps into a realm of philosophy, leaving the reader bereft of easy assumptions. You will see the world of nature in a new w

Very well thought out

If A Lion Could Talk...he wouldn't have much to say. This more or less scholarly examination of animal intelligence presents a good argument that animals are unique and very unlike the human beings who want so much to know what they are "thinking." Many studies are cited in which initially it appeared animals were using the kind of reasoning we recognize, but after exhaustive research, the results were either inconclusive or pointed in the other direction. Much of animal behavior is genetic, demonstrates the author, and although they are capable of learning complex tasks, their entire methodology is different. Language is for people, not animals, despite our desire to believe our pets "understand" us when we speak to them. They become conditioned through experience to respond to us in the best way to get their desired reward. Their behavior is entirely goal seeking, and they do develop ingenious ways to achieve their self-serving goals. The author points out that we should appreciate animals for what they are and not try to view them in terms of how much they are like ourselves. Animal intelligence, for example, cannot be measured using anything close to the criteria we would apply to measuring human intelligence or learning capacity. All in all, this was a provocative book that in my own mind at least, laid to rest many of the myths about animal communication. It was a bit dry at times but held my interest throughout because there were many excellent lessons to be learned. It's difficult to get outside ourselves and objectively evaluate "beings" that we don't understand. At least animals are smart enough not to spend much time pondering what we are thinking!

Fascinating, Challenging, and Counter-Intuitive

If you like having things you think you know challenged by a rigorous scientific thinker and expert debater, you'll like this book. You'll also learn a heck of a lot -- not only about animals and how they evolved, but about humans and how we evolved. As well as about how some of the advantages evolution has given us actually fog our thinking on issues such as animal intelligence.If you're not a rigorous scientific thinker, or can't stand to risk having a sacred cow gored (if I may use a term redolent of speciest violence against animals, or some such claptrap), don't bother reading this book. You'll only wind up giving it a one-star review and shrieking tediously about your violated sense of oneness with the Earth.