Describing the invisible. On the limits of empirical research (PDF)

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Psychology - Methods, , language: English, abstract: What is my cat thinking? ...

Yes, what is she thinking? Does she think at all? Does she have emotions? Does she daydream from time to time? Does she like me or does she only see me as an automaton that feeds her? (It makes no difference whether you prefer to think about your dog, your guinea pig, or some other kind of animal - the important thing is to think!)

Does a bird plan the construction of its nest? Or does it merely obey "blind instincts"? (Whatever that may be?) Does my cat think about what she might do next? Can she choose "freely" whether to visit the tomcat next door or whether to go hunting for mice?

Why don't we know these things? Why are "scientists" unable to provide definite answers to all these questions?

Let's assume you're interested in such questions - what could you do to find an "answer"?

Well, you could do precisely what "scientists" do - first, you could make detailed observations. Let's say you observe your animal during the day and at night, recording each of its movements. You train your microscope and your binoculars on it, and eventually you even put wires into its head to measure "electrical potential" or place it under a CT scanner.

In short, you observe and measure everything and anything that can be observed and measured until, for the sake of argument, you know everything that can be "known" about your cat (or your dog, etc.). Yet -

- you still don't know whether or not your cat "dreams", what she is "thinking" about or whether she "thinks" at all.

But why not???