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letterboxd · 5 years ago

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Leaking Secrets: The Gavin Hood Q&A.

“Does every person have to get to the end and succeed in overturning the evil empire? Life isn’t like that. Life is full of these small, difficult questions that cross our path.” Official Secrets director Gavin Hood on spies, lies and the scoop that made him feel like a journalist.

Keira Knightley yelling “It doesn’t make any sense!” at the television news is all of us, these days. The case for the invasion of Iraq, we now know, was based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction. There were many public servants who knew, even then, that the intelligence that was being gathered to make a case for Saddam Hussein’s overthrow was shockingly debatable.

Official Secrets, directed by Academy Award-winner Gavin Hood, tells the true story of one such public servant, Katharine Gun, a British intelligence specialist who worked as a Mandarin translator. In 2003, Gun leaked an NSA memo that sought Britain’s help to collect information that could be used to blackmail United Nations Security Council members into voting in favor of an invasion of Iraq.

As a spy tale, it’s not all cut-and-thrust action, foot-chases and explosions. The tension lies in Knightley’s performance as a furious and concerned Gun, wrestling with the decision to leak the memo, and in The Observer newsroom, where journalists (played by Matt Smith, Matthew Goode and Rhys Ifans) debate whether to publish it. Later, it turns courtroom drama, with Ralph Fiennes at the helm as Gun’s civil rights lawyer.

Some of the story’s details—as they often are in biopics—have been massaged for the big screen. In particular, a spell-check disaster by a young journalist on The Observer’s foreign desk is played out in front of a larger audience. And the film stops when the war starts, whereas Gun’s life continued to become more complex. Nevertheless, it’s rating well on Letterboxd for its taught and powerful portrayal of a small chapter in a huge and damaging political collusion.

South African director Gavin Hood won his Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for 2005’s Tsotsi. He is best known for his work on blockbusters X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Ender’s Game, and helmed the political thrillers Rendition and Eye in the Sky. Hood worked on the script for Official Secrets with writers Gregory Bernstein and Sara Bernstein, who had been working on the story for over a decade when it appeared on The Blacklist (they share their story about the script’s development on The Blacklist blog).

We spoke with Gavin Hood in-depth about his role in bringing the political drama to life. (This interview with Hood contains spoilers for the film’s ending, but as it’s a true-life story, the details are all on public record, so proceed as appropriate.)

From left: former intelligence specialist Katharine Gun, director Gavin Hood and journalist Martin Bright. / Photo: Chris Ferenzi/National Press Club

What made you feel that now was the right time to tell Katharine Gun’s story? What compels this reflection on recent history? Gavin Hood: I’d like to give you an easy answer but part of it is that you struggle to get the film made—it’s been three years since we first started working on it. So, in some ways the timing felt right when I first heard about Katharine Gun, and then you think ‘oh my goodness, is the landscape going to change? Is politics going to change?’ and of course it hasn’t. If anything it feels more timely in this strange post-truth world.

It might sound odd to say that, but at the time [US president George W.] Bush and [UK prime minister Tony] Blair were spinning their lies for what they genuinely believed was some higher purpose. I think they at least would have felt a certain shame in being caught out in a lie. Certainly [former US National Security Advisor] Colin Powell did when he discovered that everything he said at the UN was a lie. He described that it was the low point of his career and he’s devastated by it and he’s apologized.

In the world that we live in now I don’t think certain politicians even care if they get caught out in a lie. What is truth? It doesn’t really matter what’s true. Say what you want to say.

What I liked about the story was the rather simple idea that truth matters, and certainly being true to my own conscience matters because what else are we in a democracy but a bunch of individuals? You have to make up your own minds and act on what you believe to be the truth.

That’s an easy thing to say but not always an easy thing to do. I like the fact that Katharine Gun was not some larger-than-life political figure, she was very ordinary in many ways. She’s quite like you and me when you meet her.

Katharine is not someone who seeks the limelight. She didn’t ever really think she’d be known around the world, and even now she tends to shy away from it. But what she had was a moment where something came across her desk at her place of work that she just felt was wrong and her conscience couldn’t live with it. That’s something that’s quite simple.

You had to build suspense from these small actions with most of the dramatic implications offscreen. How do you ensure a dialogue-driven film like this has the weight you need it to have to make its impact? The challenges you’re suggesting did give me pause. She doesn’t ever—as one studio executive said to me—“when does she ‘don her cape’ as the hero?” Are we really in this ‘don the cape’ world where every story has to be about someone saving the world or otherwise it doesn’t count? Does every person have to get to the end and succeed in overturning the evil empire? Life isn’t like that. Life is full of these small, difficult questions that cross our path. We make moral and ethical decisions of big and small kinds every day and that’s what gives us our life.

This isn’t a story about a person who changed the world, it’s a story about personal conscience and those little moments that suddenly, in her case, turned into a huge story. When it came out in The Observer newspaper, it was a big story, but what was sad about it was—and please excuse my choice of words—what trumped it 24 hours later was a bigger story.

What was that story? It was the story of us invading Baghdad. All of a sudden the news media—quite understandably from a purely commercially journalistic point of view—is not looking at how we got into the war because what do we want to see? Video footage of the bombing of Baghdad. Everyone was glued to that, and then it was about the embedded journalists with the troops and the almost Hollywood movie stories.

How we got there, the reasons for it, and whether we were lied to, took ages to come around again after they didn’t find the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that they suggested [were] the reason they had to go in. As you know, the reason they had to come up with the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ argument was because they needed a legal reason to go in.

Under international law there are only two ways you can legally justify invading another country; one is that you have a UN resolution and we all go in together to stop a genocide—which is what they were hoping to get—but Katharine’s leak thwarted the plan because these non-permanent members refused to vote after it was discovered they’d been spied on. They never got that UN resolution which would have given them perfect cover.

They had to rely on the second legal justification for war in international law, which is self-defense and that was that they had to show that [Saddam Hussein] is a genuine threat to all of our safety. “He's so bad that he could launch chemical weapons on London in 45 minutes” was the Blair claim, and it turned out to be absolute nonsense.

The desire for a regime change and the belief that they would create a lovely, flowering democracy in the Middle East was their, I think, naïve agenda, but it allowed them to lie to us and then they got caught in the lie. Katharine is an ordinary person who’s part of the story of how those lies came about.

Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun.

Since this is recent history, you had the opportunity to talk extensively with many of the film’s subjects. What values did those discussions have that you could not get from the source book, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War? The book mostly focused on Katharine’s journey and the politics around the time. After I read the book I asked if I could meet Katharine Gun myself, and [producer] Ged Doherty flew me to London. I spent five days with Katharine and some interesting things came up in our conversations that I hadn’t found in the book.

I did the same with Martin Bright [journalist at The Observer, portrayed by Matt Smith] who was not covered extensively in the book. I got a great deal of information from him. He referred me to the other journalists, Peter Beaumont [portrayed by Matthew Goode] and Ed Vulliamy [portrayed by Rhys Ifans], who told me a great bit about their sources, and then I went to speak to Ben Emmerson [Katharine’s lawyer, portrayed by Ralph Fiennes] and with him I got the most significant information that was not in the book.

I’ll give you two examples. First of all, he very carefully described how he came up with the defense of necessity that he used. He was going to call for these documents that he knew would show that the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had consistently said for over a year that war without a UN resolution would be illegal under international law.

Three days before the war, Goldsmith changed his mind and came up with a bizarre idea that the 1991 Gulf War, which had been authorized by a UN resolution, had never really ended and so they could still use that. It was such a crazy fringe idea because we hadn’t won that war and the motion of that war was nonsense in the end.

I said to Ben, “How did you know when you called for those documents that you’d get what you needed? How could you be so sure that Goldsmith said what he said?” There was this pause, then he said to me, “Well you know [his Deputy Attorney General] Elizabeth Wilmshurst has resigned, right?” I did know that, but she never said why.

Well, he called Elizabeth and asked if he could come round and have a cup of tea with her. I said, “Wow, that’s never been in the press.” I ran back to Martin and told him how Ben told me the contents of the conversation that he had with her, which is depicted in the movie [Wilmshurst is portrayed by Tamsin Greig] and I asked him if he knew about this. He said, “Gavin, you’ve got a scoop!” and I replied, “Jesus, I feel like a journalist!” I’ve never made a movie where the people are still alive. I normally make up fictional people, but journalists do this every day.

The other example was that Ben told me about the conversations he had with the director of public prosecutions Lord Ken Macdonald, who’s a member of the House of Lords. If you’re in America, that’s like saying a senior senator is involved. Ben told me that they both had beach houses in Norfolk and they have known each other for many years, and Macdonald arrived unannounced at Ben’s home and started chatting to him about the case. It was very uncomfortable, and Ben said how it’s not appropriate and they can’t be talking about this.

At the coda [of the movie], Macdonald comes to Ben and says, “It wasn’t me who chose to prosecute,” and this interaction actually happened. I discovered with a bit more research that the director of public prosecutions in England has great autonomy to decide who to prosecute and who not to prosecute without any influence from any member of the government, except in cases involving the Official Secrets Act. It turns out that in order to prosecute, the director of public prosecutions must get the permission of the Attorney General.

That means Ken Macdonald must have asked Lord Goldsmith to get his permission to prosecute Katharine Gun, which was obviously given because they charged her. And then they must have said, “Lord Goldsmith, they’re asking for your documents, what do we do?” So, what we don’t know from a journalistic point of view is why did they drop that case? Our film ends with the case being dropped. Was it because Lord Goldsmith got a fright and didn’t want to show his documents?

I think it’s highly likely, because it took until 2010 when those documents were finally released to the public and showed exactly what they [had] suspected and what Wilmshurst said they would show. There’s an opportunity for a scoop here; for a journalist to go press Lord Goldsmith on this case. I think some have tried and he gives no comment. But what is the truth?

What is interesting is that although Katharine and Ben were relieved that she wasn’t going to prison, they actually felt they had a strong defense. Both of them to this day feel they never got their day in court, when they actually wanted their day in court. That is why Ben jumped up as the prosecutor was dropping the case and said, “Surely my client is entitled to know why, indeed the public is entitled to know why this case is being dropped.” He said to me he just had to get that on the record because they were shutting them down.

So this is an interesting thing, because as a piece of normal narrative filmmaking it just won’t fit into the box of ��the hero is wronged, they go about overcoming the antagonist and set the world right’. Real life is seldom like that, and so the question became ‘is the real-life story still worth telling?’ and I think yes because the story isn’t over and we’re just a tiny part of an ongoing understanding of that war.

Martin Bright has said it’s both a film—because it’s performed by actors—but it’s also in some way a piece of journalism. I hope that we’ve discovered things that weren’t in the book, to answer your question. Maybe someone will pick up [where we left off]. I think that when it comes out in Britain, more so than America, where it’s far more personal to the British, there’s some significant questions Lord Macdonald could be approached [about] and asked why he really dropped that case.

Matthew Goode and Matt Smith in ‘Official Secrets’.

Katharine yelling at the news on TV was refreshing; a reminder of how frustrating it was in 2003. Things remain complex in world politics. What’s your advice for staying invested in politics while not getting exhausted? We are exhausted, and the danger of us being exhausted with the seemingly endless bitterness between both sides of our democracy—certainly here in America—and the flagrant disregard for truth by our current president, it’s easy to become jaded and give up. The problem with authoritarianism is that it relies on people giving up.

I grew up in apartheid South Africa in the ’70s and ’80s. I know what it’s like to watch a country get worse and worse in terms of its security legislation, especially in the ’80s with the state of emergency that literally had laws saying “you can be detained without trial indefinitely, without a right of access to a lawyer”. That’s how bad it got. It’s almost inconceivable to most people.

It’s very easy to get exhausted, stop focusing on our world, and stop voting. I think our greatest obligation is to do our little part. We don’t think it’s a big part, but if each of us plays our part that’s the only way our democracy works. The minute we’ve become exhausted, we’ve given up on the only system that works. Democracy is messy but it works in our favor as citizens. When we give up on it, we give way to tyranny. It sounds dramatic but I think it’s true.

I think we have to accept the frustration. We have to say “yes, it’s frustrating, it’s never suddenly going to be fine, it’s always going to be messy and require debate”. We have to embrace the messiness of it all and not give up and say “I have to do my job—I don’t have to be politically active every day, but I do have to be a good citizen, apply my mind to what’s out there, and vote”. That’s the only way our democracy survives.

There’s something interesting about what the Australians do in their voting system. They don’t actually say “you have to vote” but they do say every citizen has to go to the polls. Some people interpret that as everyone has to vote, but in fact you can abstain at the polls. You have to mark across the line that says “I don’t vote for anyone on this list”. At least for a moment every citizen is compelled to make a statement about what they think.

Lastly, what film made you want to be a filmmaker? I grew up very disconnected in South Africa. I never saw a TV set because there were none in the country until 1976. It was part of the government’s desire to not allow the outside world in. What I used to do with my parents was rent movies on 16mm, projected onto a sheet hanging in the living room. For me, every movie I saw was fascinating because it gave me a glimpse into the world overseas, but they were always about the people from overseas.

One day when I was about ten years old, I went to the cinema with my friend to watch a little South African movie called E’ Lollipop [also known as Forever Young, Forever Free, released in 1975], about a little white boy and a little Zulu boy who are friends. I remember being white-knuckle glued to my seat. It wasn’t because it was a thriller, it was because it was a story where people spoke with my accent and were telling a story about where I came from.

I’d never seen anything like it and it spoke to me. “Oh wow, films can be made about us— I can make a film about anything!” It doesn’t just have to be about something that people from overseas do. And I think that’s when the bug bit. I haven’t told that very often, thank you for asking.

‘Official Secrets’ is in US theaters now and plays at the London Film Festival next month.

#gavin hood #official secrets #keira knightley #iraq war #british intelligence #whistleblower #whistleblowing #leaking secrets #matthew goode #matt davis #rhys ifans #ralph fiennes #wolverine #letterboxd

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years ago

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Interview: Nihi Hotels CEO on Creating a Cult Property That’s Distinctly Luxurious

James McBride, the CEO of Nihi Hotels, thinks the new luxury can be rough around the edges, and shouldn't be intrusive. Nihi Sumba Island

Skift Take: It takes old-school hospitality expertise and new-school marketing hustle to create a cult property from scratch. Nihi Sumba Island seems to be the culmination of both, plus it has the right capital and vision.

— Colin Nagy

Colin Nagy, head of strategy at Fred & Farid, a global advertising agency, writes this opinion column for Skift on hospitality, innovation, and business travel. “On Experience” dissects customer-centric experiences and innovation across hospitality, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his columns here.

When you canvas hospitality leaders around the world for who they look up to or where they find inspiration, hotelier James McBride is a recurring name people bring up.

He began his career in a Durban, South Africa kitchen; worked his way up through the Ritz Carlton for 14 years starting in 1988 and has a Harvard Business School case study referencing his work, and served as managing director of The Carlyle in Manhattan from 2003 to 2009.

In the latest phase of his career, McBride has partnered with investor Chris Burch to open a property called Nihi Sumba Island in Indonesia. It is around a 50-minute flight from Bali. McBride is a partner and CEO of Nihi Hotels.

The property is in a remote location and strives to offer an ecologically minded experience. Travel+Leisure recently named Nihi Sumba the “Best Hotel in the World” and user reviews across several platforms show that it is resonating with guests. Skift caught up with McBride in New York to discuss the hotel project, staff training, Nihi’s expansion to new locations, and his thoughts on the state of modern luxury.

Skift: Can you describe your Nihi project in Sumba to someone who hasn’t heard of it?

James McBride: We started with a very different vision than most luxury resorts and have expanded on that vision: To go beyond the idea of merely a hotel or a vacation and create a feeling and introduce our guests to a way of life. Nihi is a glimpse into a bygone era, centuries of rituals, an unspoiled landscape, and unlimited freedom to explore. We want guests to feel connected and useful and to give back and feel a part of something larger than themselves. With philanthropy at the core of our business model, the Nihi legacy stands for more than just a destination. It stands for goodwill throughout the world it serves.

Skift: You went from zero to press accolades and great consumer reviews in a short time. Describe the marketing approach?

McBride: Our destination and the community here is unparalleled in the world. By leveraging the global relationships of Chris Burch and myself, we have a network of travelers who give us the benefit of the doubt and will go somewhere they might not otherwise without a trusted endorsement. We exceeded expectations. Additionally, we embraced the digital movement immediately and made our brand Instagram-savvy. Instagram is the primary referral to our website.

We have also been very generous to our supporters—travel agents, bloggers, booking providers, and more by inviting them to experience the uniqueness of Nihi Sumba Island. Last and most important, our philanthropic commitment to the Sumba Foundation. Guests want their children to learn about charitable giving and preserving cultures and communities; there is a meaningful educational component to what we do. Guests also enjoy returning to Nihi to see how their contributions to our efforts have been deployed. All of this combined creates and enthusiasm for and awareness of the brand.

A Nihi treehouse villa. Nihi Sumba Island

Skift: How did you manage digital media versus old-school word of mouth?

McBride: It’s both. Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing mechanism, and Instagram is wonderfully pictorial. Social media is today’s word of mouth.

Skift: What is the role of local community and how does that fit in?

McBride: What has been most rewarding is being surrounded by a society that is warm and welcoming. We owe the very heart and soul of the Nihi experience to our island’s communities. We need our communities’ support, trust, and relationships to make our business possible. Local communities have also very much rallied around the Sumba Foundation. The Foundation’s efforts can only make a positive, lasting impact to the extent that the communities embrace knowledge and training, and apply best practices, systems, and protocols. They appreciate the Foundation’s balance of providing benefits while preserving cultural traditions.

Skift: How are you finding and training staff?

McBride: Our staff is 95 percent Sumbanese. Guests interact with pure, native people. By no means are they classically trained — they serve from the heart. We do not want a vanilla, repetitive type of customer service. By that I mean, our employees are not reciting from a script and responding with “certainly, my pleasure.” They are engaging and real to Sumba. We’ve had to train on efficiency and execution so that they understand prompt resolution to a guest’s needs.

Skift: How do you get the right mix of guests and not just those that want bragging rights?

McBride: Being an attractive resort destination does draw some off-brand people. We are not a stuffy, flawless experience. We are thoughtfully rough around the edges. For the most part, we appeal to our ideal guest who is adventurous because it is not easy arriving to the forgotten island! It can be 30 hours of travel for the 50 percent of our guests who journey from North America.

Skift: What are the plans for other properties in the near term?

McBride: We are always looking. Like Sumba Island, the location must be special and allow us to provide our signature “edge of wildness” experience.

Skift: What was your experience running The Carlyle?

McBride: The Carlyle was a pivotal moment in my life where I met some of the most interesting people in the world. The Carlyle is still close to my heart to this day. When I am in New York I spend a lot of time there. It is like home. I love the tradition of the place, the elements of the music between Café Carlyle and Bemelmans Bar, the simple elegance, and how it exemplifies a feeling of home away from home. Like Sumba, it attracts very interesting and eccentric people and has employees that embody that spirit.

These businesses are similar in that you either get them or you don’t. Creating them and leading them is the same. You either understand how to connect with the people, or you don’t. For example, the bathrooms in The Carlyle’s rooms are small, but guests don’t stay at the Carlyle for the bathrooms. They stay there because it feels like a home.

Skift: What were your most formative experiences in hospitality and when did you know it would be a life’s work?

McBride: For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be in the hotel businesses. I was fortunate to stay in beautiful hotels with my family while growing up. The people who fail in this business usually fail because they don’t realize it is a permanent commitment, seven days a week, working hard. My first hotel job was in the kitchen of a Durban hotel in my native South Africa. I loved it and the experience added to my drive to be successful. I joined The Ritz Carlton in 1988 in its infancy and basically grew up in the business there. From there, my career just took on a life of its own.

Skift: How is luxury changing?

McBride: Luxury means something different to everyone. Nihi Sumba Island is not a white-glove-service-and-polished-silver destination. You can bathe from your private terrace outdoors. You can indulge in unlimited spa treatments in a clifftop bale. You can practice yoga on a rock cantilevered over rice paddy fields as far as you can see. You can have lunch in the cool mist of a majestic waterfall. At Nihi, luxury is defined by the experiences we create individually for our guests.

Skift: What are the characteristics of your ideal city hotel?

McBride: For me, it is about connecting with your guests with the softest comforts, a connection that it is your home, not just a place to sleep. In cities, people are looking for tranquility, and not to be bothered. Details matter, like the availability to leave one’s clothes there between trips, quiet rooms, not closing the window treatments during turndown if there is a beautiful water or park view. Knowing how much or how little to interact with guests. Everyone over-complicates everything when our business is very simple.

It’s about making people feel warm, happy, and safe, letting them recharge so that they can go about their lives which are usually stressful and filled with issues — the last thing guests want to have to deal with is the minutia. I’m still shocked when I am in a hotel room that has classical music playing from a clock radio after turndown at night. I can never find the switch to turn it off. Hotels must evaluate old past practices to see if they make sense today. Most people don’t want a fruit bowl.

Skift: What is missing in the hospitality market at any level of the pricing?

McBride: An abundance of power outlets in convenient places to charge anything. Also, I have not seen it executed properly, but a service where your luggage is transported from the airport to your hotel room — you do not have to wait for it or see it until you arrive in your room.

Skift: What is inspiring you in other areas of travel: brands, airlines, or experiences?

McBride: I love what Swire is doing with their Houses, especially Upper House where it is all about the programming and the thoughtful engagement of people. The product is so great you almost don’t even notice there is no spa and a smaller gym. It exemplifies hospitality and really makes you feel at home. But they need more power outlets. You have to bring an extension cord with five plugs.

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psawomen · 7 years ago

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From drawing comparisons to examining bonds: philosophy of science and animals

I. Then and Now

When I was in graduate school in a philosophy department, talking about the cognitive capabilities of animals meant risking being suspected of being unphilosophical -- unscientific, even! It depended upon the context and company, of course. An indication of the depth of the rift that existed in my department was the exchange that occurred when, at my mock interview, one faculty member asked me a question involving animal belief and another faculty member advised me (in an authoritative tone) that if an interviewer ever asks about animal cognition, rather than try to answer it, my response should be to change the topic immediately!

But I soon learned there were philosophers working on the topic, and quite seriously, too. Many were women in philosophy of science. Not too long after that exchange, I got to hear Kristin Andrews speak on something involving dolphins and mirror recognition. Her papers exhibit all the rigor of the most careful work in analytic philosophy, while venturing into the muddy territory of experimental research on animal cognitive abilities. [A good example is her recent "Chimpanzee Mind Reading: Don't Stop Believing" in Philosophy Compass. ] I say muddy territory metaphorically, in that the research questions and methods in animal cognition were often not as precise as was needed to answer the philosophical question she had formulated. But it's possible it fits literally, too, as she sometimes actually works with animals herself, making her own observations firsthand. Soon I ran across others: Colin Allen co-edited The Cognitive Animal.' Sandy Mitchell argued that anthropomorphism was "not necessarily nonscientific" in an anthology devoted to the topic, Thinking With Animals, edited by the historian of science Lorraine Daston. Frans de Waal showed up in philosophy venues more and more, and was invited to give the Tanner Lectures in 2003, and gave one with the subtitle "Continuity with the Other Primates." And, Kristin Andrews went on to make a career out of her interest in the topic, publishing Do Apes Read Minds? which put forth a novel account of how to think about attributing beliefs to apes. Far from being rejected as not philosophical by the profession, the Canadian Philosophical Association awarded it the 2013 Biennial Book prize. She has since published The Animal Mind: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal Cognition, which some are using as a textbook. A sign of the acceptance of animal mind in philosophy is the mammoth Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Animal Minds, which just appeared on the scene a few months ago, which she co-edited.

That odd exchange at the mock interview took place over fifteen years ago. Things feel very different now. Philosophy of science on animal cognition gets funded now, too. Philosophers are becoming ever more adventurous about the kind of projects they are proposing.

II. "How close to us?" -- two senses

Much of the work -- at least the early work -- on animal cognition was occasioned by questions involving comparisons of the cognitive abilities of humans (often human children) and animals. This is asking how close animals are to us in the sense of comparing their abilities with ours. Here mirror self-recognition and counting are two iconic examples. Animal cognitive abilities are sometimes even labeled using developmental milestones originally designed for human children.

People who work with animals, though, are aware not just of animal cognitive development, but of the significance of the quality of the bond between animals and whom they learn from and interact with, whether those others are animals or humans. Pets -- or companion animals, as they're usually called in academic settings -- are of course a special case of the animal-human bond (as opposed to animals raised in herds for their wool, say), but why should studying them in their role as pets be any less scientific? It should be okay to ask "How close are they?" in this sense, too.

It's not unscientific to study animals in their natural habitat, and a dogs' natural habitat often is co-habitation with someone of the human species. The canine-human bond is certainly not thought to be unnatural, in fact, some find it to be one of the most amazing things natural selection has wrought. Some dogs seem able to detect more about their human's emotional and cognitive state than humanly possible. That's worthy of study in and of itself. But, then how is the canine-human bond involved in training them?

III. Philosophers as Explorers

This brings us to an unusual project by philosopher of science Carla Fehr that is an investigation into an intriguing meld of canine cognition, the canine-human bond, scientific consensus, and scientific method. Her investigation, though not devoid of all sorts of fun pet ownership aspects, means to find answers to some serious questions, and will be chronicled at a blog devoted to the project, called ontheroadwithmilo.com I am reminded of travel narratives of eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers like Humboldt, Wallace and Darwin, though the territory explored with be different; something more like an exploration of an unprobed landscape in science studies than a land Europeans have yet to study and map. Here are some excerpts from the site:

"This project is a chance to look more closely at the social, political, and scientific research on the dogs who share our lives, and to do so from the perspective of my relationship with Milo the AwesomeDog. https://ontheroadwithmilo.com/about/

"My goal.

I want to learn about dog-human relationships from expert handlers and trainers, from scientists working on this topic, and from my own relationship with Milo. I’ll explore the connections among these different kinds of knowledge to help answer a bunch of questions. [see blog for these questions]"

"The journey.

Milo and I will visit Canadian veterinary schools, and talk to veterinary and other scientists doing research on dogs. I’ll take Milo to obedience trials across the country, compete with him, and talk with people who have practical expertise training and handling dogs. I want to know these scientists’ and practical experts’ thoughts about how we generate and use knowledge about dog minds and relationships."

By now there are a number of posts up. Several concern a critique of the literature on the effectiveness of clicker training. I think this is a fascinating project, with an unusual and insightful conclusion about how the scientific method is used in invoking evidence for dog training methods. Here's a post on that: https://ontheroadwithmilo.com/2017/06/07/my-method-is-scientific-3-the-trouble-with-clicker-training/

Some knowledge comes from observation in naturalistic settings, such as this one about Milo watching action films -- or is it about Milo's reactions to the philosopher in the room viewing an action film? Good question, right? Right. https://ontheroadwithmilo.com/2017/06/06/on-watching-action-movies-with-sensitive-dogs/

And, I realized, the two posts are related. The one about observing Milo in his natural habitat of his human's living room provides background knowledge that's valuable in investigating the question about scientific method. The human-animal bond is part of the picture that is being investigated, which enriches the picture and helps open up new possibilities to consider regarding what is going on. The question "How close are they?" in the sense of bonds with humans is not unrelated to investigating "How close are they?" in the sense of comparisons with humans.

The actual journey is about to start, if it hasn't already.

Those journeys by Humboldt and Wallace and Darwin provided a lot of material to British and European scientists in the nineteenth century, and well beyond. Who knows what will result from this journey? You can sign up to get notices of new posts to the blog at ontheroadwithmilo.com

--Susan Sterrett, Wichita State University

[email protected]

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