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Full Idea
A dog makes use of the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism when, arriving at a spot where three ways meet, after smelling at two roads by which the quarry did not pass, he rushes off at once by the third without pausing to smell.
Gist of Idea
Dogs show reason in decisions made by elimination
Source
report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.69
Book Ref
Sextus Empiricus: 'Outlines of Pyrrhonism', ed/tr. Bury,R.G. [Prometheus 1990], p.36
A Reaction
As we might say: either A or B or C; not A; not B; therefore C. I wouldn't want to trust this observation without a lot of analysis of slow-motion photography of dogs as crossroads. Even so, it is a nice challenge to Descartes' view of animals.
Related Idea
Idea 20791 Chrysippus has five obvious 'indemonstrables' of reasoning [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
| 20916 | Animals have a share of reason [Democritus, by Porphyry] |
| 1875 | Dogs show reason in decisions made by elimination [Chrysippus, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| 3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
| 17204 | Animals are often observed to be wiser than people [Spinoza] |
| 12483 | Unlike humans, animals cannot entertain general ideas [Locke] |
| 5061 | Animals are semi-rational because they connect facts, but they don't see causes [Leibniz] |
| 5054 | Animal thought is a shadow of reasoning, connecting sequences of images by imagination [Leibniz] |
| 5032 | It seems probable that animals have souls, but not consciousness [Leibniz] |
| 6713 | If animals have ideas, and are not machines, they must have some reason [Berkeley] |
| 19220 | We may think animals reason very little, but they hardly ever make mistakes! [Peirce] |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| 4908 | No one knows if animals are conscious [Carter,R] |