The Philosophy of Animal MindsRobert W. Lurz This volume is a collection of fourteen essays by leading philosophers on issues concerning the nature, existence, and our knowledge of animal minds. The nature of animal minds has been a topic of interest to philosophers since the origins of philosophy, and recent years have seen significant philosophical engagement with the subject. However, there is no volume that represents the current state of play in this important and growing field. The purpose of this volume is to highlight the state of the debate. The issues which are covered include whether and to what degree animals think in a language or in iconic structures, possess concepts, are conscious, self-aware, metacognize, attribute states of mind to others, and have emotions, as well as issues pertaining to our knowledge of and the scientific standards for attributing mental states to animals. |
Contents
What do animals think? | 15 |
Attributing mental representations to animals | 35 |
Chrysippus dog as a case study in nonlinguistic cognition | 52 |
Systematicity and intentional realism in honeybee navigation | 72 |
Invertebrate concepts confront the generality constraint | 89 |
A language of baboon thought | 108 |
Animal communication and neoexpressivism | 128 |
Mindreading in the animal kingdom | 145 |
Selfawareness in animals | 201 |
The sophistication of nonhuman emotion | 218 |
Parsimony and models of animal minds | 237 |
Elliott Sober | 258 |
Glossary of key terms | 278 |
| 284 | |
| 306 | |
a proposal | 165 |
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Common terms and phrases
ability alarm calls animal behavior animal communication animal’s animals think argue argument attribute awareness baboon cognition baboons bees behavior-reading beliefs and desires Bermudez capable capacity Carruthers causal chapter Cheney and Seyfarth chimpanzees chimps Chrysippus claim cognitive maps combinatorial principle concepts consciousness constraint creature defined difficult discussion distinct eliminativism emotions episodic memory ethologists evidence example experiments explain find first first-order fit fly folk psychology goals higher-order thought hive honeybees human hypothesis inferences intentional intentional stance intentionality interaction interpretivism involves language language of thought learning logical means to achieve mental representations metacognition monkeys non-conceptual content non-human animals object observed one’s parameters parsimony particular perception philosophers plausible possess Povinelli and Vonk predators predictions primates principle propositional attitude mindreading question reasoning reflects relations relevant represent requires s-expression scientific self-awareness semantic significant simplicity social specific structure sufficient systematicity theory of mind Tomasello waggle dances