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So this lecture is the second lecture to introduce the ecological
approach to cognition.
We talked about evolution in the last lecture as one of the pieces that
contributes to the ecological approach and now, we're gonna have a final
introduction to cognitive theory and how the cognitive revolution.
And studying animal cognition helps us with this ecological approach to
cognition, where we combine evolution and cognitive theory.
So for this lecture, chapter one in The Genius of Dogs will be most helpful.
And of course, anything about Dognition is designed using
the ecological approach to cognition, so you can see it in action.
Chapter three in The Genius of Dogs is sort of a first example where
this ecological approach is used.
You can see how we went experiment by experiment,
deploying this approach.
So we talked about what cognition is already.
Cognition is the mind flexibly solving problems.
It relies on internal mental processes, that's why we need experiments,
but it allows for inferential reasoning leading to flexible problem solving.
And of course,
there are many types of intelligence that often vary independently.
So that's very important when you are thinking about cognition as an explanation
to intelligent behavior, but an ecological approach to cognition
builds on that and emphasizes the importance of flexible behavior.
Basically, without flexible behavior, there is no cognition and
there isn't something to recognize as a potential cognitive adaptation.
Something that actually is allowing the animal to survive and
reproduce better in the ecology or in the environment that you find it in,
which of course is then reflecting back to when we were talking about evolution is
what's the payoff for any trait.
And with flexible behavior, you can have payoff in cognition,
because you will be more successful at solving new problems and being flexible.
And potentially, being more successful at reproducing and
having the genes or the heritable component of your cognition
pass onto future generations, but what is flexible behavior?
Well, that's actually the most important thing to define.
And of course the Swiss Army Knife is there, because that's really
how a lot of people think about cognition is and also about flexibility.
There's different types of cognition, different types of intelligence and
just like a Swiss Army has different tools,
different species have different tools they deploy to solve different problems,
but here's how we think about flexible behavior.
If you really push me and make me define it,
flexible behavior requires a goal that you are trying to acquire.
Food or a mate or you wanna climb a tree, et cetera.
And there's a decision between different actions or means to reach your goal.
I can take this path or I could take that path.
I could climb this tree or I could go dig a hole under the tree and
that decision has to be made to potentially accomplish your goal.
And complexity is created when there are subgoals that must be reached before
the larger goal.
So I want to open a can of a canned food, but to open the canned food
I first have to get a ladder, because the knife that I need or
the can opener I need is really high up on the cabinet.
So I've gotta go get the ladder, then I've gotta open the cabinet,
get the can opener.
And finally, after I've finished those subgoals,
I will be able to complete my final goal of getting food.
So complexity's created when subgoals must be reached before a larger goal.
So the tricky thing about flexibility though is that when you see complicated
things, you may think that complexity is a good definition of flexibility.
But it's dangerous, because there are lots of animals that have complex behaviors
that aren't particularly flexible.
So complexity is really not sufficient alone as a criteria for cognition and
that's again, because there are innate behaviors that many animals express that
can be very complex.
Thinking about termites, building termite mounds or the different ants that have so
many complicated behaviors, but they're not particularly flexible.
So thinking about inflexible behavior actually and
defining what is not cognitive helps us think about what is cognitive and
think about the example of insects that have a hard time with human lighting.
Of course, moths and other animals didn't evolve to deal with human made lighting.
And they're using lights from the stars and
the moon to navigate at night, but when we have artificial lights,
it really hijacks their mechanism for navigation.
They're attracted to this stimuli and they do things that seem really maladaptive and
relatively unintelligent, which is they fly into candles and
kill themselves or they bump into our lights all night long.
And obviously, that's energy that could be used to forage.
So, another example would be an ant mill.
This may be something you're less familiar with,
where ants that use pheromones to navigate.
And as they're walking, they're dropping pheromones and
that's a signal to anybody to follow, that's in their group.
And as they're driving their pheromones though, what happens sometimes
especially in South America with certain species of ants where there's a heavy
rain is that they get disturbed and one set of ants starts going in a circle, but
it starts dropping pheromones in a circle.
But then everybody starts to drop pheromones in a circle following them in
that original circle and you end up with a massive entire group of thousands and
thousand of ants, going in a giant circle over and over and
over in whats called ant mill.
There is a link to a YouTube video if you want to watch, an ant mill,
because it is something to see.
So these are two examples of inflexible behavior that help us think about what is
not cognitive, which then, of course, helps us think about what is cognitive.
And flexibility is really rated on a continuum, it's relative.
There's really no absolute dividing line between behavior that's flexible, that
then allows it to be considered cognitive and that's really one of the challenges.
And then when behavior shows inflexibility,
it's clear that there is likely some programming that's occurred
into whatever organisms were thinking about, into their nervous
system in anticipation of some invariant environmental situations.
Think about the moths navigating with the moon.
Human artificial lighting is just
a little over just a hundred years old.
And so moths, of course, have been around for millions of years.
And using the moon or stars to navigate,
of course is a very good strategy until very recently.
So that's a case of inflexibility.
Brian HareAssociate Professor
