Animal Minds

Several influential philosophers and scientists have advanced a framework, often called Neo-Cartesianism (NC), according to which animal suffering is merely apparent. Drawing upon contemporary neuroscience and philosophy of mind, Neo-Cartesians challenge the mainstream position we shall call Evolutionary Continuity (EC), the view that humans are on a nonhierarchical continuum with other species and are thus not likely to be unique in consciously experiencing negative pain affect. We argue that some Neo-Cartesians have misconstrued the underlying science or tendentiously appropriated controversial views (...) in the philosophy of mind. We discuss recent evidence that undermines the simple neuroanatomical structure-function correlation thesis that undergirds many Neo-Cartesian arguments, has an important bearing on the recent controversy over pain in fish, and places the underlying epistemology framing the debate between NC and EC in a new light that strengthens the EC position. (shrink)

Carruthers has recently argued for a surprising conditional: if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is both correct and fully reductive, then there are no substantive facts to discover about phenomenal consciousness in non-human animals. I present two problems for this conditional. First, it rests on an odd double-standard about the ordinary concept of phenomenal consciousness: its intuitive non-gradability is taken to be unchallengeable by future scientific developments, whereas its intuitive determinacy is predicted to fall by the wayside. Second, (...) it relies on dismissing, prematurely, the live empirical possibility that phenomenal consciousness may be linked to a core global broadcast mechanism that is (determinately) shared by a wide range of animals. Future developments in the science of consciousness may lead us to reconsider the non-gradability of phenomenal consciousness, but they are unlikely to lead us to accept that there are no facts to discover outside the paradigm case of a healthy adult human. (shrink)

Are plants conscious? Most knowledgeable people say they aren't. A small minority say they are. Others say we don't know. Virtually all assume the predicate '– is conscious' is fully determinate; plants are or aren't in its extension. Appealing to Mark Wilson's work on predicates and concepts, I challenge that assumption, proposing that the predicate isn't determinate for plants. I offer the start of an explanation for why this is so. We tacitly rely on many empirical correlations when we correctly (...) characterize creatures as conscious, but we have limited knowledge of those facts, and plants differ significantly from animals, while also being substantively similar to them. We don't yet know what it would be for them to be conscious. (shrink)

In this article, we develop and defend a new argument for animalism -- the thesis that we human persons are human animals. The argument takes this rough form: since our pets are animals, we are too. We’ll begin with remarks on animalism and its rivals, develop our main argument, and then defend it against a few replies.

Reinforcement learning systems usually assume that a value function is defined over all states that can immediately give the value of a particular state or action. These values are used by a selection mechanism to decide which action to take. In contrast, when humans and animals make decisions, they collect evidence for different alternatives over time and take action only when sufficient evidence has been accumulated. We have previously developed a model of memory processing that includes semantic, episodic and working (...) memory in a comprehensive architecture. Here, we describe how this memory mechanism can support decision making when the alternatives cannot be evaluated based on immediate sensory information alone. Instead we first imagine, and then evaluate a possible future that will result from choosing one of the alternatives. Here we present an extended model that can be used as a model for decision making that depends on accumulating evidence over time, whether that information comes from the sequential attention to different sensory properties or from internal simulation of the consequences of making a particular choice. We show how the new model explains both simple immediate choices, choices that depend on multiple sensory factors and complicated selections between alternatives that require forward looking simulations based on episodic and semantic memory structures. In this framework, vicarious trial and error is explained as an internal simulation that accumulates evidence for a particular choice. We argue that a system like this forms the “missing link” between more traditional ideas of semantic and episodic memory, and the associative nature of reinforcement learning. (shrink)

Invertebrate animals are frequently lumped into a single category and denied welfare protections despite their considerable cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary diversity. Some ethical and policy inroads have been made for cephalopod molluscs and crustaceans, but the vast majority of arthropods, including the insects, remain excluded from moral consideration. We argue that this exclusion is unwarranted given the existing evidence. Anachronistic readings of evolution, which view invertebrates as lower in the scala naturae, continue to influence public policy and common morality. The (...) assumption that small brains are unlikely to support cognition or sentience likewise persists, despite growing evidence that arthropods have converged on cognitive functions comparable to those found in vertebrates. The exclusion of invertebrates is also motivated by cognitive-affective biases that covertly influence moral judgment, as well as a flawed balancing of scientific uncertainty against moral risk. All these factors shape moral attitudes toward basal vertebrates too, but they are particularly acute in the arthropod context. Moral consistency dictates that the same standards of evidence and risk management that justify policy protections for vertebrates also support extending moral consideration to certain invertebrates. Moving beyond a vertebrate-centered conception of welfare can also clarify foundational moral concepts in their own right. (shrink)

What is human reason, how did it arise, how is it connected to animal reason? In The Enigma of Reason (ER) Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber (2017) suggest that reason evolved driven by the need to support communication and coordination in small human groups. They contrast this to the idea that the function of reason is to enable humans to make better decisions and develop more accurate beliefs. After a summation of the ER argument, the theory is critiqued and two (...) of their assumptions -- that human cognition is based on massive modularity and that reason co-evolved with and is dependent upon language -- are challenged. Alternatives to these assumptions are presented from the perspective of pattern matching processes in neural dynamical systems, which it is asserted provides a more realistic approach to the functioning of the brain and mind. (shrink)

This essay introduces a special issue focused on 4E cognition (cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) in the Lower Palaeolithic. In it, we review the typological and representational cognitive approaches that have dominated the past fifty years of paleoanthropology. These have assumed that all representations and computations take place only inside the head, which implies that the archaeological record can only be an “external” product or the behavioral trace of “internal” representational and computational processes. In comparison, the 4E approach (...) helps us to overcome this dualist representational logic, allowing us to engage directly with the archaeological record as an integral part of the thinking process, and thus ground a more parsimonious cognitive archaeology. It also treats stone tools, the primary vestiges of hominin thinking, as active participants in mental life. The 4E approach offers a better grounding for understanding hominin technical expertise, a crucially important component of hominin cognitive evolution. (shrink)

The Cartesian view that animals are automata sparked a major controversy in early modern European philosophy. This paper studies an early contribution to this controversy. I provide an interpretation of an influential objection to Cartesian animal automatism raised by Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673). Pardies objects that the Cartesian arguments show only that animals lack ‘intellectual perception’ but do not show that animals lack ‘sensible perception.’ According to Pardies, the difference between these two types of perception is that the former is reflexive (...) such that we both perceive an object and the perception itself, whereas sensible perception lacks this reflexivity. This notion of sensible perception was criticized by the Cartesian Antoine Dilly for violating the doctrine that all thought is conscious. However, I argue that sensible perceptions are not unconscious for Pardies. Rather, they are conscious perceptions that are unaccompanied by a kind of reflexive perception that is constitutive of attention. Moreover, I argue that when understood in this way Pardies raises a compelling objection to Cartesian animal automatists. (shrink)

In "Cognition Beyond the Human Domain", Angel Garcia Rodriguez provides critical commentary on Pieces of Mind: The proper domain of psychological predicates (Oxford UP, 2018). In this reply, I argue that his alternative "No-Core" semantic proposal is not an alternative to the Literalist view I defend, but rather one way of elaborating that position.

In their target article, Mikhalevich & Powell (M&P) argue that we should extend moral protection to arthropods. In this commentary, we show that there are some unforeseen obstacles to applying the sort of individualistic welfare-based ethics that M&P have in mind to certain arthropods, namely, insects. These obstacles have to do with the fact that there are often many more individuals involved in our dealings with insects than our ethical theories anticipate, and also with the fact that, in some sense, (...) some insects count as more than an individual and, in another sense, they sometimes count as less than an individual. (shrink)

Volume 98, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 410-413.

In this introductory work, Mind and Brain: A Dialogue on the Mind-Body Problem, 2nd edition, Gennaro updates and expands the work to reflect current topics and discussions. The dialogue provides a clear and compelling overview of the mind-body problem suitable for both introductory students and those who have some background in the philosophy of mind. Topics include: Immortality, Materialism, Descartes' "Divisibility Argument" for substance dualism, The "Argument from Introspection" for substance dualism, The main objections to dualism, The interaction between mind (...) and brain, The relation between brain damage and the prospect of an afterlife, Parallelism and epiphenomenalism, The type/token distinction within materialism and the problem of multiple realizability, Arguments against materialism and its ability to explain consciousness, Property dualism and panpsychism, The epistemological problem of other minds, The nature of inductive knowledge, Evidence for animal consciousness, The problem of machine or robot minds, The inverted spectrum argument. Also included are a brief Introduction, a list of Study Questions designed to enhance classroom discussion and serve as a resource for the development of paper topics, a Glossary, and an Index of Key Terms. (shrink)

1. Die Frage nach der Natur des Menschen und die Rede vom „Menschenbild“ 2. Die anthropologischen Definitionsformeln 3. Die Zuständigkeitsfrage 4. Die abenteuerliche Kürze der Definitionsformeln 5. Der Mensch-Tier-Vergleich 6. Warum sollte die menschliche Natur unwandelbar sein? 7. Kategorische und graduelle Unterschiede 8. Ausblick: Die Transformationsthese.

Landmarks play a crucial role in bootstrapping both spatial and temporal cognition. Given the similarity in the underlying demands of representing spatial and temporal relations, we ask here whether animals can be trained to reason about temporal relations by providing them with temporal landmark cues, proposing a line of future research complementary to those suggested by the authors.

The opinions that people hold about the nature of consciousness are important not only to researchers in philosophy and science, but also in many professional fields such as clinical medicine, law, and education. However, in spite of this importance and how controversial the topic is, there is remarkably little empirical data concerning what these opinions are. Here we describe the results of a multi-year survey of university students concerning their beliefs about the nature of consciousness and about what entities are (...) conscious. We find that these students are split fairly evenly between dualists and materialists, and that they also include a significant number of idealists. Almost all of the participants attribute consciousness to other people, and the vast majority attributes it to at least some animal species but not to computers. These results, especially when combined with those from the few existing previous surveys that we review, do not support past statements in the consciousness studies literature that dualism is by far the dominant viewpoint in the general population. The results also indicate that most people resolve the problem of other minds in a way that includes some animals as being conscious. (shrink)

Dr. Fouts began his lecture with the story of how he and his wife Deborah became involved with Washoe—the first non-human to acquire the signs of American Sign Language (ASL). Project Washoe began in 1966 with Drs. Allen and Beatrix Gardner in Reno, Nevada. There had been other experiments that attempted to get chimpanzees to speak. These experiments were not successful due to anatomical and neurological differences between humans and chimpanzees. (Fouts showed some video of the chimpanzee Vicki trying to (...) say the four words she had learned—mama, papa, up, cup.) Part of the issue is the construction of the chimpanzee’s vocal box while another part of the issue is that chimpanzee vocalizations are tied to their .. (shrink)

In this article I take an unusual starting point from which to argue for a unified cognitive science, namely a position defined by what is sometimes called the ‘life-mind continuity thesis’. Accordingly, rather than taking a widely accepted starting point for granted and using it in order to propose answers to some well defined questions, I must first establish that the idea of life-mind continuity can amount to a proper starting point at all. To begin with, I therefore assess the (...) conceptual tools which are available to construct a theory of mind on this basis. By drawing on insights from a variety of disciplines, especially from a combination of existential phenomenology and organism-centered biology, I argue that mind can indeed be conceived as rooted in life, but only if we accept at the same time that social interaction plays a constitutive role for our cognitive capacities. (shrink)

: My commentary on Hurley is concerned with foundational issues. Hurley's investigation of animal cognition is cast within a particular framework—basically, a philosophically refined version of folk psychology. Her discussion has a complicated relationship to unresolved debates about the nature and status of folk psychology, especially debates about the extent to which folk psychological categories are aimed at picking out features of the causal organization of the mind.

i>: We should not overintellectualize the mind. Nonhuman animals can occupy islands of practical rationality: they can have specific, context-bound reasons for action even though they lack full conceptual abilities. Holism and the possibility of mistake are required for such reasons to be the agent’s reasons, but these requirements can be met in the absence of inferential promiscuity. Empirical work with animals is used to illustrate the possibility that reasons for action could be bound to symbolic or social contexts, and (...) connections are made to simulationist accounts of cognitive skills. (shrink)

The question of cognitive endowment in animals has been fiercely debated in the scientific community during the last couple of decades, and indeed, all throughout the long history of natural philosophy. The scientific quest for an empirical, evolutionary account of the development and emergence of cognition has met with many philosophical objections, blind alleys and epistemological quandaries. I will argue that we are dealing with conflicting philosophical world views as well as conflicting empirical paradigms of research. After looking at some (...) examples from the relevant literature of animal studies to elucidate the nature of the conflicts that arise, I propose, in strict Darwinian orthodoxy, that cognitive endowments in nature are subject to the sort of continuum and gradation that natural selection of fit variant forms tends to generate. Somewhere between the myth of “free” humans and the myth of “behaviourally conditioned” animals lies the reality of animal behaviour and cognition. In the end, I hope to have softened up some of those deep-seated philosophical problems that puzzle and dazzle laymen, scientists and philosophers alike in their quest for knowledge about the natural world. (shrink)

I challenge the dominant understanding of what it means to say two thoughts are associated. The two views that dominate the current literature treat association as a kind of mechanism that drives sequences of thought. The first, which I call reductive associationism, treats association as a kind of neural mechanism. The second treats association as a feature of the kind of psychological mechanism associative processing. Both of these views are inadequate. I argue that association should instead be seen as a (...) highly abstract filler term, standing in for causal relations between representational states in a system. Associations, so viewed, could be implemented by many different mechanisms. I outline the role that this view gives associative models as part of a top-down characterization of psychological processes of any kind and of any complexity. (shrink)