[LeifCarrotson]

The post contains a pretty strong assertion that dogs cannot perform mental reflection:

> In the authentic happiness Shadow finds in the most banal of activities, his commitment to life and action is one that we humans find so hard to emulate. This is because of something that happened to us: a great schism in consciousness that we know as reflection. We humans are the world heavyweight champions of thinking about ourselves, scrutinising and evaluating what we do and why we do it.

> This schism breaks us in two. Henceforth we are all divided into one who thinks and one who is thought about; one who sees and one who is seen; one who reflects and one who is reflected upon. This bifurcation in our consciousness robs us of the possibility of a certain type of happiness, the happiness that accompanies being whole. Shadow is whole in a way that a human can never be.

...

> Being undivided by reflection, being whole and entire, a dog has only one life to live, whereas we – in whom reflection’s canyon is deepest – have two. For us, there is both the life that we live and the life that we think about, scrutinise, evaluate and judge.

It's one thing to assert that a philosophy of living in the moment may be good for people, something completely different to assert that dogs are incapable of living otherwise.

[pdonis]

Is there any evidence that dogs can perform mental reflection?

[IncreasePosts]

What would dog mental reflection even look like? "I should have chosen a different route when chasing that rabbit?"

I don't think there is any evidence for mental reflection at this moment, but the nature of reflection is that is entirely internal, and we don't really know in what manner dogs have cognition.

But, the trend seems to be that we only learn more about the inner lives of animals as time goes on. 100 years ago it was accepted that non-human animals were essentially automatons that didn't feel feelings or have emotions, or engage in any kind of thought, which we know now is not true.

[sorokod]

"What would dog mental reflection even look like?"

Maybe "I acted in a way that displeased my owner, next time I will not act that way".

[pdonis]

> "I acted in a way that displeased my owner, next time I will not act that way"

This kind of conditioning can take place without any mental reflection--we know this because humans can be conditioned this way without even being consciously aware of it.

This is not to say that the dog is unaware of having displeased their owner (which, as another poster pointed out, is in itself a form of mental reflection, although, as I responded, a very rudimentary one). It's just to say that the dog can be conditioned by this experience to not act that way next time, without being aware of it and without doing any mental reflection.

[sorokod]

Yes, could. Doesn't mean it must.

Your use of the word rudimentary implies some sort of spectrum, that makes sense to me.

[pdonis]

> Your use of the word rudimentary implies some sort of spectrum

Yes, it does. See my reply to abainbridge downthread.

[jacobmidtlyng]

Anecdote but my dog dreams a lot and sometimes mimics the sounds and motions she makes when we play together. Other times mimics chasing things. Seems like reliving her favorite activities. Might not be intentional but its a form of reflection.

[abainbridge]

Yep. When I walk into a room containing my dog and the poo it did on the carpet two hours earlier, it is sorry about what it did.

[Mali-]

Pavlovian response. The dog associates pooing on the carpet with you punishing it/being upset with it.

[pdonis]

> When I walk into a room containing my dog and the poo it did on the carpet two hours earlier, it is sorry about what it did.

This shows that the dog knows it did something you didn't want it to do, yes. I'm not sure it shows "thinking about ourselves, scrutinising and evaluating what we do and why we do it", which is how the article this discussion is about described "mental reflection". Our dogs have made messes in our house and have shown evidence that they know they're not supposed to, but I see no evidence that they have done any reflection on why they did it.

Of course "mental reflection" is not an all or nothing thing, obviously there is a continuum of possibilities. So a more precise phrasing of my question might be: is there any evidence that dogs can perform mental reflection at a point on that continuum anywhere near the point where humans do it? Or are they only capable of it at a point on the continuum much, much closer to the other end, the "no reflection at all" end?

[sorokod]

What would a metric for measuring distance on this continuum look like?

[pdonis]

I'm not sure since we don't have any good way of quantifying "amount of mental reflection". But that doesn't mean there isn't a large difference between dogs and humans in this regard.

[littlekey]

Seems like a fair assertion to me, accepting the fact that we have no way (yet?) of proving it one way or the other. Just from observing any animal I think the default assumption is that we're the only ones who ruminate about our own selves the way we do.