This article is by Alan Jacobs:

Do dogs feel guilt when they’ve done wrong? Ask Google and you’ll discover that there are opinions — many, many opinions, most of them held with great firmness. But there are three answers that dominate the discourse:

1. They don’t feel guilt, they feel shame.
2. They don’t feel guilt or shame, they’re afraid.
3. We don’t know.

While I think the third answer is clearly the best, I won’t try to decide the question here. I want instead to think about the eminent philosopher Alvin Plantinga.

In 1967 Plantinga published his first book, God and Other Minds. The core argument of the book goes something like this: Most of us believe that other people have minds, but is it rational to think so? (Note that the question here is not, strictly speaking, whether other people actually do have minds, but whether it is rational for us to believe that they do.) Plantinga concludes that it is indeed rational to believe that other people have minds — and moreover that on the same grounds it is rational to believe in the existence of God. That is, the major arguments against the existence of God also serve to deny the existence of other minds; and if we reject such skepticism about the existence of other minds, then we may also reject such skepticism about the existence of God. There’s a lot more to it — Plantinga disassembles and investigates the specific sequences of reasoning — but I think that’s a fair summation.

Which leads us back to dogs. If we believe that dogs do not feel guilt, then why do we believe that people do?

Might not the guilty looks of people be as misleading as the guilty looks of dogs? People can use words, of course — unlike dogs, they can say, “I am at fault, I am guilty, it was wrong of me to tear your pillow into tiny pieces and scatter them all over the floor” — but why would we trust words more than looks? We are able to perceive only signs of guilt; we can’t peer into minds, human or canine, to see if the guilt is real.

In all such matters, I prefer a hermeneutics of trust to a hermeneutics of suspicion. When my dog manifests guilt, I will soften my heart, I will forgive, I will scratch his ears and say Who’s a good dog? And I’d do as much for you. I mean, with species-appropriate adjustments.

COMMENTS

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2 responses to “Dog and Other Minds”

1. Vicky Brandt says:

   10/13/2022 at 10:05 am

   Hear, hear for a hermeneutics of trust, and for other minds! I just finished Adam’s Task by Vicki Hearne—philosopher, poet, animal trainer, and for a while faculty at Yale, who summed up the three opinions opening this post as ‘mechanomorphism’. She would argue, I think, that the real purpose of training a dog is to create a world in which the dog can express his/her full moral being—her description of the way a dog changes when they ‘own’ a command like ‘find it’ or ‘fetch’ is compelling. This perhaps only makes sense if you read her work, which is philosophically, literarily, and morally rich. If by chance you’re unfamiliar with her, here’s a Pushcart-prize winning essay of hers: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Hearne_OyezABeaumont.pdf Enjoy.

   Reply
2. CJ says:

   10/13/2022 at 12:40 pm

   Rich yet concise! Love it.

   Reply