Animal Experiments and Laboratory Conditions: Some Initial Thoughts

I stumbled upon this paragraph on the website for the Medical Research Modernization Committee,

“the highly unnatural laboratory environment invariably stresses the animals, and stress affects the entire organism by altering pulse, blood pressure, hormone levels, immunological activities and a myriad of other functions. Indeed, many laboratory "discoveries" reflect mere laboratory artefact”

The article goes on to list and reference several examples where they believe artificial laboratory conditions aided in misleading researchers. For example, they take it that “unnaturally induced strokes in animals has repeatedly misled researchers”. I am in no position to evaluate such medical cases, and the authors of the article insufficiently explicate their examples for a lay person to draw reasonable conclusions. I hope at some point in the future to be able to comment more on this topic. However, their general point is one I have often considered albeit within the arena of animal behaviour and cognition.

An intense mouse.
 Can an artificial environment affect the physiology of an animal in such a way that it bears on medical and other research?  

The rough idea is that the artificial laboratory conditions may affect the results of experiments in important ways.

Scientists researching social cognition in chimpanzees, say, need to be aware that a laboratory environment may affect the animal’s normal psychology. For example, long time interaction with humans may make an animal more susceptible to certain human oriented behaviour, another factor which might affect generalisation from results. Experiments involving tasks in which chimps must assist humans need to take into account whether the subjects have prior history with experimenters. And indeed this is discussed and taken into account in many good experiments.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with experiments into social cognition in chimps within a laboratory setting. It would be foolish of us to disregard all laboratory based research. In most cases it is the only possible environment.

In one of my favourite studies, designed explicitly to compare human infants and young chimpanzee altruistic tendencies, human and infant chimps were tested on similar tasks (Warneken and Tomasello, 2006: 1). A human experimenter confronted a problem and needed assistance (e.g. reaching for an out-of-reach-marker, bumping into object that needs removal), with no reward given for help. Whilst the human infant intervened in more tasks than the chimp, the latter did reliably assist in the tasks involving reaching (incidentally also the task in which the children most reliably helped). These results, I believe, provide good support for a natural capacity, in both human and chimps, for non-selfish helping behaviour and tendencies beyond near kin, . It is hard to fault this study for taking place in laboratory settings.

In addition to possessing theory of mind, this guy can actually possess your mind.

Nevertheless the setting and history of all subjects must be taken into account as a potentially relevant variable. In short we need be aware of the possibility that a laboratory setting might affect the psychology and thus behaviour of animal subjects.

Warneken F, Hare B, Melis AP, Hanus D, Tomasello M (2007) Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children. PLoS Biol 5(7): e184. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050184

Gilbert Ryle's Concept of Mind

I'd call this a book review, but I haven't finished the book yet. I am enjoying it though, so I thought I'd write a few words about some of the more relevant themes.

Just chilling, no doubt reading some Wittgenstein

As I mentioned last time, it was Gilbert Ryle who coined the term "ghost in the machine" to refer to the disembodied mind that cognitive science seems intuitively drawn towards. The Concept of Mind is to a large extent aimed at dispelling this intuition, but along the way it also touches upon a number of other fascinating topics. Below is a list of ideas that Ryle either introduces, expands upon, or pre-empts:

• "Knowing How and Knowing That": This is the title of a whole chapter, wherein he draws a conceptual distinction between the two kinds of knowing. In brief, the first is the skilful execution of an action, the second the reliable recollection of a fact. The "intellectualist legend", according to Ryle, makes the former subordinate to the latter, in that all activities are reduced to the knowledge of certain rules (32). That this reduction is false is fundamental to his broader point - there is no isolated realm of the mental, and all cognitive activity must be expressed through action (or at least the potential for action).
• Embodied cognition and the extended mind: In the same chapter, he devotes a few pages to the common notion that thinking is done "in the head" (36-40). This notion, he argues, is no more than a linguistic artefact, stemming from the way we experience sights and sounds. Unlike tactile sensations, sights and sounds occur at some distance from our body, and so when we imagine or remember them, it makes sense to highlight this distinction by saying that they occur 'in the head'. By extension thought, which Ryle conceives of as internalised speech,¹ is also said to occur 'in the head'. However this idiomatic phrase is just metaphorical, and there is no reason that thinking should (or could) occur exclusively in the head.
• "The Will": Another chapter, this time de-constructing our understanding of volition and action. Suffice to say, Ryle thinks we've got ourselves into a terrible mess, in particular in supposing that to do something voluntarily requires some additional para-causal spark. Rather, to describe an action as voluntary is simply to say something about the manner in which, and circumstances under, it is performed. Free will, under this reading, is something to do with the kind of causal mechanism involved, rather than anything 'spooky' or non-physical.² Personally I've never found this kind of account particularly convincing, but it is nonetheless influential to this day.
• Higher-order thought as a theory of consciousness: Although he never explicitly puts it this way, there is a passage where Ryle describes how some "traditional accounts" claim that what is essential for consciousness is the "contemplation or inspection" of the thought process that one is conscious of (131). This is very similar to contemporary 'higher-order' theories of consciousness (see Carruthers 2011). Ryle doesn't exactly approve, dismissing such theories as "misdescribing" what is involved in "taking heed" of one's actions or thoughts.

So there you have it: Gilbert Ryle, largely forgotten but by no means irrelevant. As you may have noticed, a lot of his ideas influenced Daniel Dennett, which isn't surprising, seeing as Dennett studied under Ryle at Oxford.

1. This, perhaps, is one source of Dennett's fable about the origins of consciousness (1991).
2. Again, this is reminiscent of Dennett (2003).
 

References

• Carruthers, P. "Higher-order theories of consciousness." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/consciousness-higher [21.12.2012]
• Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown & Company.   
• Dennett, D. 2003. Freedom Evolved. Little, Brown & Company.   
• Ryle, G. 1949. The Concept of Mind. Hutchinson.