Abstract
In this essay, I deal with the problem of the attribution of psychological predicates to non-human animals. The first section illustrates three research topics where it has become scientifically legitimate to explain the conduct of non-human animals by means of the attribution of psychological predicates (mind-reading in apes, episodic memory in rats, and the feeling of regret in rats and mice). The second section discusses several philosophical objections to the legitimacy of such attributions provided by central thinkers from the last decades (like Malcolm, Stich, Davidson, Dummett, McDowell, and Brandom). I try to show that these objections —which are related among other questions to the holism of the mental, the indeterminacy of the attributions, and the strangeness of animal concepts— can be alleviated. In the third section, I propose to adopt a literalist view of the attributions in the sense articulated by Figdor (2018). At the same time, I argue that one must draw limits to the conceptual change forwarded by her literalist view, taking into account holistic considerations and the fact that the psychological concepts must retain their core notes.
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Notes
This general viewpoint can also be couched in ontological terms as ‘anti-realism or ‘non-realism’ on animal thoughts. However, some of these authors may also be seen as encouraging an anti-realist viewpoint regarding the attribution of thoughts to humans. Therefore, the ontological discussion —which deserves its own space— may obscure the distinction I make between admitting and denying the legitimacy of the attributions in the realm of animals.
As a reviewer of this paper suggested, this can be considered an unsatisfying situation but not necessarily an unsatisfying analysis, which may be accomplished for example by distinguishing cognition and mind (cf. Keijzer 2021). In this paper, I do not aim at a direct analysis of the situation, but I intend to show that assuming the existence of a common ground helps to understand, with philosophical tools, the attributions that are made in different research fields. Ultimately, this strategy also helps to view the limits of this common ground, as I intend to show in section 3.2.
The usual idiom used in philosophy to describe a mental state takes it to be a ‘propositional attitude,’ that is, a psychological stance towards a ‘content’ that can be expressed by means of a proposition composed of concepts. Since not all attitudes have propositions as contents, I will use the expression ‘intentional attitude’ (Glock 2010, p. 13). A reviewer of this article pointed out that the philosophical arguments in the debate are usually arguments against attitudes by making a point about content. I agree with the remark, but I would formulate it differently. I would affirm that the conclusions of the arguments that concern the thought’s contents are usually extended to include the attitudes themselves. For example, the holistic constraints on the attribution of thoughts (considered as contents) are taken to include the attribution of attitudes (Davidson 1982). However, I believe that this traditional approach does not take into account the intentional attitudes in a more direct way, and that there is room to inquire if the arguments primary aimed at contents have the same implications when applied to the attitudes themselves. This is a central motivation of this paper (specially dealt with in section 2). My approach is thus compatible with revisionary perspectives such as the one recently put forward by Newen and Starzak 2020a, b> (I thank the reviewer for the reference). More precisely, the orthodox view assumes that the consideration of contents has a priority in the debate, and one main reason is that without the possibility of attributing specific contents, it has no sense to attribute attitudes. Contrary to this perspective, Newen and Starzak plausibly claim that there are behavioral and cognitive criteria that permit the attribution of attitudes independently of the attribution of specific thoughts. In agreement with them, I believe that even if attitudes require contents (as I argue in Section 2.2), they have their own conditions of attribution. (Other authors that favor the idea that behavioral and cognitive sophistication are sufficient to attribute beliefs-like representations that avoid the requisite of determinacy are Stich 1979, Godfrey-Smith 1999; Sterelny 2003 and Millikan 2005, see the discussion in Glock 2020).
Note that in each control condition the correct decision is not relevant to disappointment itself —that is, it does not cause this negative emotion- but it is relevant to contrast the sequence with the regret condition.
The attribution of negatable contents is a controversial issue since some authors deny that non-linguistic animals can have thought contents involving negation (Bermúdez 2007; Millikan 2007). For reasons of space, I will only suggest that the problem that this generates for mental holism in the animal case may be avoided in at least three different ways: (i) one can defend the thesis that a mental holism of beliefs does not require negatable contents; (ii) one may pursue an anti-realist strategy, maintaining the legitimacy of such attributions on instrumentalist grounds; (iii) one can defend the possibility of attributing negatable contents (and thus contents involving negation) to non-human animals. My personal view is that the last option is worth pursuing.
In section 2.2, I admitted that attitudes require contents, which is in line with Wittgenstein’s and Davidson’s holism, and I argued that the attribution of contents is in principle solvable. In this section, and in this paper generally, I deal with the attitudes themselves, which is not Davidson’s primary concern (see also footnote 3). At the same time and for reasons of space, I do not deal with the interesting question whether the ascription of attitudes is priori to the ascription of contents or viceversa.
A further indeterminacy source is related to the diverse representational formats that some authors postulate to explain different mental capacities. According to them, when we translate the content of a non-linguistic format into a natural language we cannot avoid indeterminacy, even when the target thought is a human one (Beck 2013).
As a reviewer of this paper pointed out, one can construe Figdor’s position as primary concerned with cognition (as set by the discourse in the cognitive sciences) and not with intentional states (as discussed in philosophy). However, I think it is also possible to understand her literalism as an extensive discussion with philosophy, therefore assuming a common ground between both fields of inquiry. For one, she accepts that her theory can be understood in a philosophical vocabulary: in ‘the traditional philosophical framework (…) thoughts are analyzed as attitudes towards propositions (…). In these terms, Literalism is a theory about attitude ascriptions, not content ascriptions.’ (Figdor 2018, pp. 10–11). Furthermore, Figdor (2018) develops arguments against several philosophers: Sellars, McDowell, and specially Brandom are discussed in relation to their ‘space of reasons’ and its implications for a literalist view (Chap. 4); the Wittgensteinian objections coming from Bennett and Hacker have a central role throughout the debate; and a variety of other prominent philosophers are given voice in the dialectics (like Searle, Grice, and Dennett). Of course, one could argue that the assumption of common ground is in her case only for the sake of the debate. For my present purposes, I only claim that Figdor’s view can also be construed as concerned with the intentional attitudes that philosophers discuss.
For reasons of space, my reconstruction will leave aside certain aspects of Figdor’s literalism, for example the ones concerning the metaphysical and ethical consequences of her position.
Figdor tries to sidestep these holistic considerations for the case of the propositional attitudes (not for the intentional contents) (pp. 77–78). As I already argued, I find this possibility unconvincing, since a mental life that consists in having only one kind of intentional attitude is not what we would recognize as a mental life at all. In the wake of her discussion with Brandom, she also follows another strategy (p. 78 ss). She argues that even if we concede that mental life must be embedded in a holistic normative dimension (the ‘space of reasons’), we have no reasons to deny the possibility of finding a non-human normative dimension. But I think that this strategy does not work either. It is very improbable to find normative conditions as rich as the ones put forward by Brandom in relation to human language outside the human realm. Furthermore, even if it is possible to imagine a deflationated normative dimension, it is implausible to attribute it in the domains where bacteria and neurons display their complex behavior.
When the literal interpretation and the conceptual revision evince these limits one may dissociate the terms employed in the empirical field of cognition, on the one hand, from the mentalist vocabulary, on the other (Keijzer 2021 generalises this strategy, that I would only adopt where literalism falls short). Along the same lines, it may be objected —with Figdor- that even if the revised concepts are beyond recognition according to our folk psychological intuitions, they may still be part of the conceptual apparatus of valid scientific research. This may be the case, but it would come close to a ‘technical view,’ which was extensively criticised by Figdor, who affirms that ‘technical terms often retain important semantic links to their non-technical cousins’ (p. 72). I have no space to deal with the complex problem of the relation between folk psychology and science in Figdor’s theory. But I would like to suggest that, since Figdor defends a literalist view according to which the concepts that are used in unexpected domains (flies prefer, neurons decide, etc.) should be interpreted as having the same meaning as they have in the human domain, one could expect them to retain some of their relevant everyday notes.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Hans Johann Glock’s research team at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and to Thomas Muller’s research team at the University of Konstanz (Germany) for helpful remarks, and to Laura Danón and Daniel Kalpokas for valuable comments and suggestions. The anonymous reviewers of this paper also helped me to improve the paper in several impor-tant ways.
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Crelier, A. Attributing Psychological Predicates to Non-human Animals: Literalism and its Limits. Rev.Phil.Psych. 14, 1309–1328 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-022-00643-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-022-00643-z