by Matthew Cobb

Imagining that others experience the same feelings as oneself, or being able to see things from another’s perspective, is an essential part of being an adult human – it’s called having a ‘theory of mind’. Young children find it difficult, and either learn it or develop this ability as part of normal growth. Severely autistic individuals can also fail some of the simple tests that are used to measure this ability. This character, or a primitive version of it, must have been present in our primate ancestors, and there is evidence that chimps can attribute ‘intentionality’ to human behaviour, which suggests they can image what we feel/think.

Now, in a paper just published in PNAS, Professor Nicky Clayton’s group from the University of Cambridge have shown that the Eurasian jay – a beautiful bird that very occasionally comes into my (very small) back garden, are apparently able to attribute ‘desire-states’ to other birds. In children, attributing a ‘desire-state’ to an individual (their wants and wishes) occurs prior to the development of a fully-fledged theory of mind. If Clayton’s group is right, and jays do have the ability to attribute ‘desire-states’ to other individuals, the simplest explanation is that the same ability has evolved at least twice – once in our hominid lineage, and once (and perhaps first) in the avian dinosaur lineage.

The authors set up a cooperative feeding experiment, in which males could provide their mate with food. The reason for this is that it is presumed that there is a link between cooperative behaviour and state-attribution (and food-sharing is a key part of courtship behaviour in jays). The females had already eaten as much as they wanted of one of two kinds of food (either waxmoth larvae or mealworm larvae). The hypothesis was that if the males could attribute a desire-state to their partner and had observed her at the eat-all-you-an-eat buffet with one kind of food, he would be less likely to offer her that food. And this is exactly what happened – the males would share significantly less of the food that the female had been eating.

For the doubting Thomases and Thomasinas, although the sample size was small (7 pairs) they did the experiment 20 times on each pair, swapped around which food the females were stuffing themselves on and also included a maintenance diet control. And they included an ‘unseen’ condition in which the male couldn’t see what the female had eaten; in this case there was no significant effect, showing it wasn’t the female shaking her head and saying ‘no thanks, I’ve eaten too much of them already’ when proffered one kind of food. It looks pretty tightly designed to me.

The authors deal with some of the obvious criticisms:

“The results of the unseen condition negate the possibility that the males might have learned a simple rule (such as “do not feed what has just been eaten”). Learning about an action can only occur when that action is reinforced (regardless of the content of what is being learned). Therefore, in our case, for the male to learn when is an appropriate situation in which to feed the female different foods, he must have experience of the acceptance or rejection of certain foods by the female. As discussed earlier, the results of the unseen condition indicate that the female’s immediate behavior when the male is sharing the food during the test phase is not sufficient to elicit the differential sharing pattern by the males: it is only in the seen condition that the male provides the food that the female desires. This difference between the seen and unseen conditions makes it highly unlikely that males would have been able to previously learn any rule for which the female’s acceptance or rejection of his attempts at sharing would have acted as the reinforcement.”

They are also extremely careful about how far their data should be interpreted. They conclude, circumspectly:

“The results of the current study present a crucial first step in demonstrating state-attribution. They fulfill the necessary behavioral criteria, namely ruling out behavior reading at the time of action and providing evidence of self–other differentiation. Our study suggests that the Eurasian jays’ food-sharing behavior represents a useful paradigm within which to investigate whether these birds, and more generally nonhuman animals, might be capable of desire-attribution.”

So the answer to the question in the title of this post is: we have no evidence that jays (those are the modern dinosaurs, of course) have a theory of mind; but it seems that they can do something that is on the way to having such a theory.

In one way, you might say this is no surprise. Corvids (jays, crows, magpies etc) are amazingly smart, as Clayton’s group has shown on a number of occasions, in particular in their tool use and their ability to pretend to hide food if they see another bird watching them (this would indicate desire-state attribution, too, I think). And magpies are the only non-mammals that have been shown to pass the mirror self-recognition test, which is one of the proxies we have for something like consciousness. Furthermore, the English poet Chaucer knew this, and made a caustic comparison between the intelligence of the jay and the stupidity of the Pope in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales:

And eek ye knowen wel how that a jay

Kan clepen “Watte” as wel a kan the pope

Reference:

Ljerka Ostojić, Rachael C. Shaw, Lucy G. Cheke, and Nicola S. Clayton (2013) Evidence suggesting that desire-state attribution may govern food sharing in Eurasian jays. PNAS March 5, 2013 vol. 110 no. 10 4123-4128

Here’s a reading assignment for those of you interested in morality.  It consists of three papers, all of them free (download links at bottom), and a book. These papers, which form a natural unit, have had a strong impact on my thinking about not just morality, but theology as well.

All three papers are eminently accessible to the layperson: they are clear, very well written, and incisive.  The Greene paper is a bit long (and includes rebuttals after it), but all are essential reading for those pondering the current arguments about the nature of morality, where it comes from (both cognitively and evolutionarily), and whether morality can in any sense be objective.

I still think that there is no way that morality, or moral laws, can be “truths” in any scientific sense, for from the outset they all presuppose some system of value. But putting that aside, the references below will at least make you think about whether we should trust or follow our moral instincts.

One thing I’d like to say first is that many accommodationists, most notably National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins, have argued that the existence of a “moral law,” that is, the intuitive feelings we have about morality (such as those involving matters like “trolley and footbridge problems”), cannot be explained by evolution or social agreement, and thus must have been instilled in us by God.  I disagree, of course, and think with Greene and others that intuitive morality is most likely a product of our evolution in small social groups. That is, to a large degree morality comprises hardwired feelings and behaviors that evolved via kin or individual selection to enable individuals to thrive in small ancestral groups. If you want to get an idea of how our instinctive morality leads us to pass very different judgments about scenarios that don’t differ much, read about those trolley and footbridge dilemmas in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s nice book.

But on to the papers.

Here are their main points:

• The Greene paper is mainly about the two great types of morality: deontology (“moral rules and rights” vis-à-vis Kant, which should be followed even if their net effect on “well being” is negative), and consequentialism (e.g., utilitarianism), in which something is “moral” if it has certain overall consequences for society. These usually include the maximization of things like well being or happiness.

• Greene makes the case that deontological feelings of morality embody our intuitive moral judgements, and are largely the product of evolution. The reason they are intuitive rather than reasoned is because we had to make such judgments quickly in the ancestral environment, and evolution would favor mental “rules of thumb”. We simply didn’t have time to weigh the consequences of our actions.

• Both Greene and Singer make the point that the ancestral environment is no longer the environment in which we live, and hence our intuitive judgments about what’s moral may no longer be optimal. (I’ve recently made this point as well, not realizing—since I’m a philosophical beginner—that others had dealt with this in extenso. One example cited by both Greene and Singer involves the trolley/footbridge problems.  We intuitively feel that switching a runaway trolley about to kill five people onto another track on which one person stands is morally fine: it saves five lives at the expense of one. But throwing a fat man standing beside you on a footbridge onto the track to stop the train, which achieves the same end (the premise is that you’re too thin to stop the train by jumping onto the tracks yourself), is instinctively seen as immoral. Yet the consequences are the same in terms of any reasonable judgment. This is a difference between deontology and consequentialism.

Singer makes the point that while it may not be immoral to throw a fat guy down on the tracks, it may also be unwise to publicize that act: there is a difference between acting morally and making that public, for the latter may have consequences you don’t want. But why is there a difference between how we feel about the footbridge and trolley problems? Greene argues that our moral revulsion at deep-sixing the fat guy is because our moral sentiments evolved when we were close up to others: we lived in small social groups. Trolleys didn’t exist on the savanna, and in such cases, where the recipients of our actions are remote, we don’t have an instinctive reaction.  And cases when we don’t act or feel instinctively, we can ponder the consequences—and that’s consequentialism. (Both Greene and Singer are, of course, consequentialists.)

In today’s society, Greene, Singer, and Haidt feel that consequentialism is a better foundation for morality than is deontology, since the former involves reasoned rather than instinctive judgments. (None of these men, at least when wrote their papers, argue that consequentialism is an objective system of morality—they simply claim it has better social results.)

• Haidt adduces a lot of evidence that, when making moral judgments, many people act deontologically. One sign is that they favor retributive punishment rather than punishment that deters others, rehabilitates the offender, or sequesters bad people from society. Greene, for example, gives this example:

“In one study Baron and Ritov (1993) presented people with hypothetical corporate liability cases in which corporations could be required to pay fines. In one set of cases a corporation that manufactures vaccines is being sued because a child died as a result of taking one of its flu vaccines. Subjects were given multiple versions of this case. In one version, it was stipulated that a fine would have a positive deterrent effect. That is, a fine would make the company produce a safer vaccine. In a different version, it was stipulated that a fine would have a “perverse” effect. Instead of causing the firm to make a safer vaccine available, a fine would cause the company to stop making this kind of vaccine altogether, a bad result given that the vaccine in question does more good than harm and that no other firm is capable of making such a vaccine. Subjects indicated whether they thought a punitive fine was appropriate in either of these cases and whether the fine should differ between these two cases. A majority of subjects said that the fine should not differ at all.”

Retributive punishment is deontological, not consequentialist. Those who favor retribution don’t care about its consequences for society: they have an innate feeling that punishing someone who did wrong is a rule that should be obeyed—regardless of the social consequences.

Greene and Singer give other examples of things that have no inimical effect on society are nevertheless rejected via intuition as immoral. Three examples are a man who masturbates with a grocery-store chicken before cooking and eating it, a woman who cleans her toilet with an American flag, and a man who reneges on a promise to his dying mother to visit her grave every week. Such judgments are instinctive—deontological and not consequentialist. They stem from an innate outrage that something is wrong.  Yet their consequences for society are nil.

• Why do we make such moral judgments about situations that have no negative consequences, and which we’d probably retract were we to think about them?  All the authors think that instinctive judgments are largely a product of evolution.  But of course these judgments must then be justified. When pressed, people who think about the chicken-masturbation or grave-visitation scenarios think up reasons—often not convincing—why these behaviors are immoral.  All three authors suggest that these post facto rules are examples of confabulation: making up stuff post facto to rationalize your instinctive feelings. In this way, then, deontology can be seen as a poorly grounded form of morality—one that rests on instincts that evolved in situations that may no longer obtain. Far better, the authors agree, to be a consequentialist, for that involves some use of reason, reason that takes into account modern social conditions.

• Haidt’s paper, with its cute title, is about how many of our judgments are driven by emotion rather than reason, and he gives many examples from his own work. The point of the title is that in cases of moral judgment we are often making the emotional dog (instinctive morality) wag the rational tail (our reasoned judgment), and that is not good.  Haidt has a nice analogy about confabulating reasons post facto for our instinctive judgments, and our inability to persuade people to abandon their confabulations:

“If moral reasoning is generally a post-hoc construction intended to justify automatic moral intuitions, then our moral life is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the “wag-the-dog” illusion: we believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the “wag-the-other-dog’s- tail” illusion: in a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent’s arguments to change the opponent’s mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog’s tail to wag by moving it with your hand should make the dog happy.”

I have to agree with these author’s analyses: I, too, am a consequentialist—largely along the lines of Sam Harris, though we differ in whether we think (as does Sam) that such morality is objective. I feel it’s simply the best way to behave if we want a harmonious society, and I favor abandoning—I’ll find no seconders here!—the term “moral action” altogether.

As for theology, well, I doubt that any of us think that instinctive moral judgments are evidence for God. Much recent work of anthropologists and primatologists, most famously Frans de Waal, shows that the rudiments of human moral behavior can be seen in our close primate relatives.

But I also realized that theologians engage in the same kind of confabulation that Greene and others impute to moral deontologists. Theologians often begin with an ingrained religious belief—ingrained not by evolution but by their parents and peers.  They then engage in a kind of sophisticated confabulation—called theology—to justify their innate beliefs. That’s theological deontology, also called “apologetics.” The more theology I read, the more convinced I become that theologians are simply educated grown-ups engaged in rationalizing childish (or child-like) beliefs.

I really do recommend setting aside some time and reading the papers below, and at least the two “trolley problem” chapters in Thomson’s book. I hope I’ve represented them fairly. If you must read only one, it should be Greene’s, but they really form a triad that should be read together. Then read Thomson’s book to learn about the trolley problem, and many other interesting moral issues. I guarantee that a. you’ll enjoy them, and b. they’ll make you think, even if you wind up rejecting their premises.

________________

Greene, J. D. 2007. The secret joke of Kant’s soul. pp. 35-79 in W. Sinnott-Armstrong, ed. Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Haidt, J. 2001. The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psych. Rev. 108:814-834.

Singer, P. 2005. Ethics and intuitions. J. Ethics 9:331-352. (download here, using utilitarian.net site).

Thomson, J. J. 1986. Rights, Restitution, and Risk: Essays in Moral Theory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

by Matthew Cobb

There is a community of medievalists on Twitter who re-tweet their latest finds in their studies of illustrated manuscripts. I follow some of them, and this popped up in my Twitter stream today. It is a stupendous 112 page 13th century Sicilian manuscript from the Vatican Library, dealing with birds and falconry (De Artes Venandi Cum Avibus, Pal. lat. 1071). [SEE EDIT AT END FOR MORE INFO]

Here are just some of the examples of the illustrations. Birders who think they can ID the beasts, chip in below. Better still, go to the Vatican site (not often you’ll read those words here) and then come back to tell us what you’ve found – please give the page number, which will be a number followed by r (recto) or v (verso).

All the illustrations here are taken from there, and are obviously their copyright.

This first image (12r) shows a stork nesting on top of a tower on the right. The MS has been damaged by water…

Here, on 18r, are some owls (which kinds?). The point of the MS, however, appears to be about falconry, and the second half of it has illustrations relating to hunting with birds. Here are some raptors from 56r:

Here’s an uncoloured drawing of a falconer from 99r (the illustrations on 94r – 105r haven’t been finished):

This gives you an idea of what the finished drawings look like:

And here’s an image from 69r of what a hunter would do after a hard day’s falconry – swim (with his hat on) , while his falcon noms a duck by the side of the lake.

In this account, Judge Arthur Tompkins of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (which I presume doesn’t include bad taste), describes a visit to the Vatican Library where he was allowed to see a 1969 reproduction of the MS, but not the original. The MS is a copy of an original that was lost during the 1248 siege of Parma.

EDIT: Thanks to ThonyC (aka @rmathematicus) who points out that the original MS (of which this is a contemporaneous copy) was made for/written by Frederick II, who was Holy Roman Emperor at the time, but nonetheless set up a secular legal system, was a skeptic who was excommunicated twice for his pains, founded the world’s first secular university (the University of Naples), argued that physicians should learn anatomy by dissection rather than book-learning, and was obsessed with falconry (hence this fantastic book). Interestingly, according to John C Wilkins, Frederick wrote a preface to this book in which he criticised Aristotle becaause “we find many quotations from other authors whose statements he did not verify and who, in their turn, were not speaking from experience. Entire conviction of the truth never follows mere hearsay.” Amazingly, no sooner had Aristotle been translated into Latin then this man began criticising him using terms that we would be expect to see in the 17th century, not the 13th.

SECOND EDIT: ThonyC also pointed out that I should have consulted Wikipedia! (Jerry will be amused by this as I am generally suspicious of that website and scold my students when they cite it.) However, the Wikipedia page on De arte venandi cum avibus points out that it was dedicated by Frederick II to his son, Manfred. In turn, Manfred commissioned this Vatican copy of the MS, and it contains “additions made by Manfred, which are all clearly marked in the beginning by notations such as “Rex”, “Rex Manfredus” or “addidit Rex””. The reference for this is a 1923 article by Charles Haskins in The English Historical Review. The age of the internet being so amazing, not only can we all see the amazing manuscript, we can also find the article at the click of a mouse. Haskins analyses the various versions of the manuscript, and points out that the image at the beginning of the MS, on 1r, is in fact of the amazing Frederick II himself, complete with one of his beloved falcons:

h/t Kathleen McCallum aka @peripheralpal

[EDIT: Kathleen in turn got the link from Giulio Menna from Leiden aka @SexyCodicology who has a website here. Follow them both on Twitter for more medieval manuscript mayhem!]