Abstract
Cognitive ethology is the comparative study of animal cognition from an evolutionary perspective. As a sub-discipline of biology it shares interest in questions concerning the immediate causes and development of behavior. As a part of ethology it is also concerned with questions about the function and evolution of behavior. I examine some recent work in cognitive ethology, and I argue that the notions of mental content and representation are important to enable researchers to answer questions and state generalizations about the function and volution of behavior.
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I would like to thank Dorothy Cheney, Keith Donnellan, Alan Nelson, and Robert Seyfarth for their help.
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Allen, C. Mental content and evolutionary explanation. Biol Philos 7, 1–12 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00130160
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00130160