Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What could cognition be, if not human cognition?: Individuating cognitive abilities in the light of evolution

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. See also Vonk and Shackelford (2012) on the distinction between evolutionary psychology as the specific research programme and evolutionary psychology (what they call comparative evolutionary psychology) as the study of psychology, human or otherwise, under the unifying framework of evolution. This paper falls within, and contributes to, the latter.

  2. Darwin proposed a similar distinction between “Unity of Type” and “Conditions of Existence”; see Griffiths 2007 and Erwin 2021 on historical views related to contemporary character concepts. The ontology of characters is still a matter of debate, akin to the well-known species problem and related to the problem of understanding when two phenotypes in different species express the same character (see, e.g., Platnick 1979; Colless 1985; Hall 1994; Lauder 1994; Grant and Kluge 2004, Freudenstein 2005, Laublicher and Wagner 2000, Wagner 2001, 2014). Homology too has been defined in distinct ways (Ereshefsky 2012 provides a concise summary). While homology is not of central concern here, my references to homology are to phylogenetic or historical homology, which involves identical characters in two or more species that have a common evolutionary origin (usually relative to the species’ most recent common ancestor). There is also general agreement that a character can take on alternative forms called character states, akin to the alleles of a gene – e.g., the hind wing character of insects has wing blade and altere character states (see Duda and Zrzavy 2013: 427–428 for a sample table of characters and character states). Despite these unsettled conceptual issues, biologists agree on many examples of characters, character states, and homology, have ample empirical motivation and evidence for positing characters, and consider them critical targets of and elements in evolutionary explanations. For my goal of showing the importance of the character concept for explaining cognition, it suffices to explain its explanatory role and to highlight the key features that define commitment to characters. I set aside (as not critical here) serial homology (character repetition within an organism, e.g. cervical vertebrae) and homoplasy (variously defined as non-homology, analogy, or as the opposite end of a spectrum of similarity from homology, e.g. Boyden 1947, Ghiselin 1976, Hall 2007).

  3. The issues of character individuation and novelty have garnered increasing attention as major concerns in their own right. See, e.g., Bock and Cardew 1999, Butler and Saidel 2000, Hall 2003, Griffiths 2006, 2007; Brigandt 2003; Novick 2018; Erwin 2021; Muller and Wagner 1991; Peterson and Muller 2013; Shubin et al. 2009; DiFrisco et al. 2020; Love 2008, 2015, 2018; Brigandt and Love 2012.

  4. The boundaries of characters at different levels of biological organization also align contingently (Ereshefsky 2012 calls this “hierarchical disconnect”). They evolve at different rates, homology at one level does not entail homology at others, and co-evolution often occurs with temporal lags between appearances of novel characters at distinct levels (Erwin 2021; Corballis 2000; Ginsburg and Jablonka 2010). For example, the Pax-6 gene is homologous in mammals and flies and plays a key role in the development of mammalian camera and fly compound eyes, but the eyes themselves are nonhomologous (Wagner 2001, 2007, Shubin, Tabin, and Carroll 2009).

  5. The standard example is the relation between being red and being colored (Wilson 2021). As with other determinates, being one determinate (e.g., a human canine tooth, being red) rules out being another (e.g., a narwhal canine tooth, being blue), and the relation is not conjunctive (e.g., a human canine tooth is not a canine tooth plus some independent properties, whereas a human is a mammal plus some independent properties, such as having cognitive states).

  6. Thus, the question of why primates have disproportionately large frontal lobes can be disambiguated into complementary queries using Tinbergen’s (op. cit.) framework. The phylogeny question asks about the ancestry of the primate brain, and will have competing explanations in terms of characters and homology. Other queries, such as what function large frontal lobes have, will have competing explanations in terms of adaptive pressures (e.g. Dunbar and Shultz 2017).

  7. In principle, the same mistake would be made whenever any species-typical phenotype is used as the reference type in relation to which other species’ traits are less than full-fledged. But the mistake is rare outside of human cognitive phenotypes. For example, pigeon visual systems do not need a land-based reference point to get distance-data about things in the sky, whereas the human visual system does (Matthen 2007). We do not however claim that the pigeon visual system is full-fledged while the human system is not.

  8. The Scala Naturae itself contained the idea of inferior grades of “high-level” cognitive capacities in the form of racist distinctions in intelligence that created a linear ranking of humans within our species’ rung. Darwin himself was not exempt from this legacy of cognitive racism (Jeynes 2011).

  9. McShea and Simpson (2011) note the theoretical inconsistency of the final transition to human society and language, as it involves a change of criteria from an increase in hierarchy to an increase in information transmission.

  10. Such conceptual hiccups are not limited to those on the “discontinuity” side. Consider Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin’s (1994) Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human mind: Kanzi’s mind is no more at the brink of the human mind than his hands are at the brink of the human hand.

  11. I simplify matters for illustrative purposes, since language interacts with other cognitive abilities, and the voluminous literature on language and its evolution cannot be reviewed here. To give one example, if an ability to learn language requires understanding communicative intentions, then either a species that does not possess this ability cannot learn language, or they have another language acquisition mechanism. So communicative intentions must also be reconceptualized so that nonhuman species are not ruled out a priori from having them (Moore 2017, Townsend et al. 2017). Whether a communication system must be learned to count as a language is a further issue.

  12. Balari and Lorenzo argue that human language may be a novel character state, if not a novel character; they follow Wagner 2014 in linking distinct types of evolutionary novelty to characters and character states. Others reserve the concept of novelty for characters and character states (usually structural), using the concept of innovation for phenotypes (usually functional or adaptive) (Erwin 2021; Love 2007, 2008). In any case, I am not arguing that human language is not novel as a character or as a character state – that is a matter of individuating the relevant characters, and is certain to be a contentious issue going forward. I am arguing that its status as a novelty (or not) becomes an a posteriori issue by virtue of adopting a character-based concept of syntax.

  13. For some sociocultural theories of cognition, see Boyd and Richerson 1985; Deacon 1997; Tomasello 1999; Sterelny 2003, 2007; Whiten and Erdal 2012; Heyes 2018, 2019; Kempe et al. 2014; Beller et al. 2020; Kirby et al. 2007; Avital and Jablonka 2000. Like that of language evolution, this literature is also voluminous and cannot be reviewed here.

  14. Another motivation is the question of whether some realizers extend beyond an entity’s boundary. While the issue of the range of cognitive ascriptions across species and this boundary issue are frequently discussed together, my concern is solely with respect to the range question, which is prior to the boundary issue.

  15. In specific cases, a structural character may be necessary for individuating a behavioral or cognitive character, for example in relation to the senses (e.g. Keeley 2002). However, co-evolution and substrate-dependence motivate blurring the structure-function divide in at least epistemological ways, such as when researchers use genetic, developmental, and morphological homologies to support inferences to homologous behavioral and cognitive characters (e.g. Jarvis 2019; De Waal and Ferrari 2010) or to counter claims of uniquely human cognitive abilities based on allegedly unique human brain structures (Herculano-Houzel 2012; Barton and Venditti 2013; Olkowicz et al. 2016; Logan et al. 2018).

  16. What basal cognition is offering in place of the human standard is not clear, as advocates appear conceptually divided in fundamental ways. This includes the issue of whether cognitive terms are used “non-metaphorically” for many simple entities (e.g. Lyon et al. op. cit.: 2) or whether such uses are merely “as if” and a matter of personal choice (e.g. Lyon et al. op. cit.: 4). I discern at least two basic forms, which agree on rejecting the human standard and including all evolved biological entities within the scope of cognitive ascriptions. Some advocates are biocyberneticists, who apply the cybernetic framework to all evolved biological entities (e.g. Manicka and Levin 2019; Levin et al. 2021). In this case, basal cognition’s scope is a restriction from (or subset of) the domain of all entities subject to cybernetic explanations. At least some in this camp appear to embrace Dennett’s intentional stance in that it is fruitful to treat these entities as agents (e.g. Levin and Dennett 2020). Other advocates take basal cognition’s starting point as evolutionary biology; in this case, its scope is an expansion from a few biological entities to all those subject to evolutionary explanations. At least some in this camp hold that the ascriptions of cognitive abilities in the “basic toolkit” are the same across unicellular and multicellular organisms (e.g. Lyon 2015). In the text, I have taken on board the latter interpretation, because it is consistent with basal cognition’s role in the ongoing debate about the extent of cognition (as Adams 2017 makes clear), and it links basal cognition essentially to biology and evolutionary explanation.

  17. I say “may be” because basal cognition (in its biology-based form: see fn. 17) can be elaborated in a way grounded in CSS and CPS that takes at least some structure into account. A straightforward interpretation of the claim of a “basic toolkit” of cognitive characters true of all of life is that this toolkit existed in the Last Universal Common Ancestor and is homologous in all descendant clades that possess it (or at least one component of it). An alternative interpretation that takes structure into account might hold that prokaryotes have a derived, novel cognitive “toolkit” and eukaryotes have another, and these are homologous within these broad clades but only analogous to each other. In this case, the LUCA must be ascribed an ancestral “cognitive” toolkit as well, for few would disagree with the idea that cognitive abilities are derived, novel characters: the central question of the “What is Cognition?” debate (in my terms) is precisely whether cognitive characters are found only in a few higher clades (if not just hominins) or much more widely, as basal cognition asserts. In the text, I articulate what this assertion amounts to in terms of the straightforward interpretation; the alternative is possible, but creates new problems for the view. For example, a eukaryote-cognition-toolkit would take structure into account and would not be maximally general. But why stop at multicellularity? The problem is that the more structure matters, the less “basal” basal cognition becomes.

  18. When weighing evidence as to whether cognitive abilities are homologous or analogous, De Waal and Ferrari (op. cit.: 202) suggest as a “most parsimonious Darwinian assumption” that if closely related species (octopus and squid, human and ape) “show similar solutions to similar problems, they probably involve similar cognitive mechanisms” – that is, cognitive homologies within higher (relatively more terminal) clades. This view is consistent with the ontologically conservative approach mooted in the text, although in no way is basal cognition ruled out.

References

  • Adams F (2017) Cognition wars. Stud Hist Philos Sci 68:20–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allen T, Fortin N (2013) The evolution of episodic memory. PNAS 110(2):10379–10386

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avital E, Jablonka E (2000) Animal traditions: Behavioural evidence in evolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Balari S, Lorenzo G (2015) It is an organ, it is new, but it is not a new organ: conceptualizing language from a homological perspective. Front Ecol Evol 3:3–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barkow J, Cosmides L, Tooby J (1992) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford University Press

  • Barton R, Venditti C (2013) Human frontal lobes are not relatively large. PNAS 110(22):9001–9006

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bennett M, Hacker PMS (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Blackwell, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Beller S, Bender A, Jordan F (eds) (2020) Editors Review and Introduction: The cultural evolution of cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science 12 (2): 644–653

  • Bergeron V (2021) Carving the Mind at its Homologous Joints. Biol Philos 36(4):1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baluska F, Levin M (2016) On having no head: cognition throughout biological systems. Front Psychol 7:902

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Block N (1978) Troubles With Functionalism. In: Savage C (ed) Perception and Cognition: Issues in the Foundations of Psychology. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 261–325

    Google Scholar 

  • Bock G, Cardew G (eds) (1999) Homology. Novartis Foundation Symposium 22. Chicester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

  • Boesch C (2007) What makes us human (H. sapiens)? The challenge of cognitive cross-species comparisons. J Comp Psychol 121(3):227–240

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bolhuis J, Wynne C(2009) Can evolution explain how minds work?Nature486

  • Bolhuis J, Tattersall I, Chomsky N, Berwick R (2014) How could language have evolved? PLoS Biol 12(8):e1001934

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson P (1985) Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago University Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyden A (1947) Homology and Analogy: A critical review of the meanings and implications of these concepts in biology. Am Midl Nat 37(3):648–669

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brigandt I (2003) Homology in Comparative, Molecular, and Evolutionary Developmental Biology: The radiation of a concept. J Experimental Zool (Mol Dev Evol) 299B:9–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brigandt I, Love A (2012) Conceptualizing evolutionary novelty: Moving beyond definitional debates. J Exp Zool 318B:417–427

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bueno O, Chen R-L, Fagan M (eds) (2018) Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Burkhardt R Jr (2005) Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology. University of Chicago Press

  • Butler A, Saidel W (2000) Defining sameness: historical, biological, and generative homology. BioEssays 22:846–853

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calvo P, Keijzer F (2009) Cognition in Plants. In: Baluska F (ed) Plant-Environment Interactions, Signaling and Communication in Plants. Springer-Verlag, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Cartmill M (1990) Human uniqueness and theoretical content in paleoanthropology. Int J Primatol 11(3):173–192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christiansen M, Kirby S (2003) Language Evolution: consensus and controversies. Trends Cogn Sci 7(7):300–307

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clayton N, Russell J (2009) Looking for episodic memory in animals and young children: Prospects for a new minimalism. Neuropsychologia 47:2330–2340

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colless D (1985) On “Character” and Related Terms. Syst Zool 34(2):229–233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corballis M (2017) Language evolution: a changing perspective. Trends Cogn Sci 21(4):229–236

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corballis M, Lea S (2000) Are humans special? A history of psychological perspectives. In: Corballis M, Lea S (eds) The Descent of Mind: Psychological Perspectives on Hominid Evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 1–20

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Deacon T (1997) The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of language and the human brain. W.W. Norton and Co, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • De Queiroz A, Wimberger P (1993) The usefulness of behavior for phylogeny estimation: Levels of homoplasy in behavioral and morphological characters. Evolution 47(1):46–60

    Google Scholar 

  • De Waal F, Ferrari P (2010) Towards a Bottom-Up Perspective on Animal and Human cognition. Trends Cogn Sci 14(5):201–207

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Fiore A, Rendall D (1994) Evolution of social organization: A reappraisal for primates using phylogenetic methods. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences USA 91: 9941–9945

  • DiFrisco J, Love A, Wagner G (2020) Character identity mechanisms: a conceptual model for comparative-mechanistic biology. Biol Philos 35:44:1–32

    Google Scholar 

  • Dobzhansky T (1973) Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Am Biology Teacher 35(3):125–129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duda P, Zrzavy J (2013) Evolution of life history and behavior in Hominidae: Towards a phylogenetic reconstruction of the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor. J Hum Evol 65:424–446

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunbar R, Shultz S (2007) Understanding primate brain evolution. Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 362:649–658

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunbar R, Shultz S (2017) Why are there so many explanations for primate brain evolution? Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 372:20160244

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dupre J (2021) The Metaphysics of Biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ereshefsky M (2007) Psychological categories as homologies: lessons from ethology. Biology and Philosophy

  • Ereshefsky M (2012) Homology Thinking. Biol Philos 27:381–400

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Figdor C (2018) Pieces of Mind: the proper domain of psychological predicates. Oxford University Press, London and New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Freudenstein J (2005) Characters, states, and homology. Syst Biol 54(6):965–973

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghiselin M (1976) The Nomenclature of Correspondence: A new look at “homology” and “analogy”. In: Masterton B, Bitterman M, Campbell C, Hotton N (eds) Evolution of Brain and Behavior in Vertebrates. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp 129–142

  • Ginsburg S, Jablonka E (2010) The evolution of associative learning: A factor in the Cambrian explosion. J Theor Biol 266:11–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grant T, Kluge A (2004) Transformation series as an ideographic character concept. Cladistics 20:23–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths P (1997) What Emotions Really Are: The problem of psychological categories. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths P (2006) Function, homology, and character individuation. Philos Sci 73:1–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths P (2007) Evo-Devo Meets the Mind: Toward a developmental evolutionary psychology. In: Sansom R, Brandon R (eds) Integrating evolution and development: From theory to practice. MIT Press, pp 195–225

  • Griffiths P (2009) In what sense does ‘nothing make sense in the light of evolution’? Acta Biologica 57:11–32

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene H(1999) Natural history and behavioural homology. In Bock and Cardew, eds.Homology.173–182

  • Hall B (ed) (1994) Homology: The hierarchical basis of comparative biology. Academic Press

  • Hall B (2003) Descent with modification: the unity underlying homology and homoplasy as seen through an analysis of development and evolution. Biol Rev 78:409–433

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall B (2007) Homoplasy and Homology: Dichotomy or continuum? J Hum Evol 52:473–479

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall B (2012) Homology, Homoplasy, Novelty and Behavior. Developmental Psychobiology

  • Hauser M, Chomsky N, Fitch WT (2002) The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298:1569–1579

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herculano-Houzel S (2012) The remarkable, yet not extraordinary, human brain as a scaled-up primate brain and its associated cost. PNAS 109(suppl1):10661–10668

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heyes C (2013) Q&A. Curr Biol 23(3):R98–R100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heyes C (2018) Cognitive Gadgets. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Heyes C (2019) Precis of Cognitive Gadgets. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Behav Brain Sci 42:40–42

    Google Scholar 

  • Jarvis E (2019) Evolution of vocal learning and spoken language. Science 366(6461):50–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jeynes W (2011) Race, racism, and Darwin. Educ Urban Soc 43(5):535–559

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keeley B (2002) Making sense of the senses: Individuating modalities in humans and other animals. J Philos 99(1):5–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Kempe M, Lycett S, Mesoudi A (2014) From cultural traditions to cumulative culture: parameterizing the differences between human and nonhuman culture. J Theor Biol 359:29–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirby S, Dowman M, Griffiths T (2007) Innateness and culture in the evolution of language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 104 (12): 5241–5245

  • Laine V, Gossmann T, Schachtschneider K, Garroway C, Madsen O, Verhoeven K, de Jager V, Megens H-J, Warren W, Minx P, Crooijmans R, Corcoran P, Sheldon B, Slate J, Zeng K, van Oers K, Visser M, Groenen M (2016) Evolutionary signals of selection on cognition from the great tit genome and methylome. Nature Communications 7: 10474

  • Levin M, Dennett D (2020) Cognition All the Way Down. Aeon.co. 13 October 2020

  • https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-understand-cells-tissues-and-organisms-as-agents-with-agendas

  • Levin M, Keijzer F, Lyon FP, Arendt D (2021) Uncovering cognitive similarities and differences, conservation and innovation. Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 376:20200458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd E (2004) Kanzi, Evolution, and Language. Biol Philos 19:577–588

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Logan C, Avin S, Boogert N, Buskell A, Cross F, Currie A, Jelbert S, Lukas D, Mares R, Navarrete A, Shigeno S, Montgomery S (2018) Beyond Brain Size: uncovering the neural correlates of behavioral and cognitive specialization. Comp Cognition Behav Reviews 13:55–89

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lorenz K (1965) Evolution and Modification of Behavior. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Love A (2007) Functional homology and homology of function: biological concepts and philosophical consequences. Biol Philos 22:691–708

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Love A (2008) Explaining Evolutionary Innovations and Novelties: Criteria of explanatory adequacy and epistemological prerequisites. Philos Sci 75:874–886

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Love A (2015) ChINs, swarms, and variational modalities: concepts in service of an evolutionary research program. Biol Philos 30:873–888

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lovejoy AO (1936) The Great Chain of Being: The history of an idea. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyon P (2006) The biogenic approach to cognition. Cogn Process 7:11–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lyon P, Keijzer F (2007) The Human Stain: Why cognitivism can’t tell us what cognition is and what it does. In B. Wallace, A. Ross, J. Davies, and T. Anderson, eds., The Mind, the Body and the World: Psychology after cognitivism (Imprint Academic): 132–165

  • Lyon P (2015) The cognitive cell: bacterial behavior reconsidered. Front Microbiol 6:264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lyon P, Keijzer F, Arendt D, Levin M (2021) Reframing cognition: getting down to biological basics. Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 376(20190750):1–11

    Google Scholar 

  • Manicka S, Levin M (2019) The Cognitive Lens: a primer on conceptual tools for analysing information processing in developmental and regenerative morphogenesis. Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 374:20180369

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Margoliash D, Nusbaum H (2009) Language: The perspective from organismal biology. Trends Cogn Sci 13(12):505–509

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Masters J (2007) Taking phylogenetic systematics beyond pattern analysis: Can models of genome dynamics guide predictions about homoplasy in morphological and behavioral data sets? J Hum Evol 52:522–535

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matthen M (1998) Biological universals and the nature of fear. J Philos 95(3):105–132

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matthen M (2000) What is a hand? What is a mind? Revue Int de Philosophie 54(4):653–672

    Google Scholar 

  • Matthen M (2007) Defining vision: What homology thinking contributes. Biol Philos 22:675–689

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McShea D, Simpson C (2011) The Miscellaneous Transitions in Evolution. In: Calcott B, Sterelny K (eds) The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Millikan R (1987) Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Moczek A (2008) On the origins of novelty in development and evolution. BioEssays 305:432–447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muller G, Wagner G (1991) Novelty in evolution: Restructuring the concept. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 22:229–256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neander K (2014) A Mark of the Mental: In defense of teleoinformational semantics. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Olkowicz S, Kocourek M, Lucan R, Portes M, Fitch WT, Herculano-Houzel S, Nemic P (2016) Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain. PNAS 113(26):7255–7260

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Owen R (1849) On the archetype and homologies of the vertebrate skeleton. John van Voorst, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Penn D, Holyoak K, Povinelli D (2008) Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the continuity and discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. Behav Brain Sci 31:109–178

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson T, Muller G (2013) What is evolutionary novelty? Process vs. character based definitions. J Experimental Zool (Mol Dev Evol) 320B:345–350

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Piccinini G (2020) Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining biological cognition. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pinker S, Bloom P (1990) Natural language and natural selection. Behav Brain Sci 13:707–784

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Platnick N (1979) Philosophy and the Transformation of Cladistics. Syst Zool 28(4):537–546

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Premack D (2007) Human and animal cognition: Continuity and discontinuity. PNAS 104(35):13861–13867

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam H (1967) Psychological Predicates. In Capitan and Merrill, eds. Art, Mind and Religion. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press

  • Putnam H (1975) Philosophy and our Mental Life. In: Putnam H (ed) Mind, Language, and Reality, Philosophical Papers, vol 2. Cambridge University Press, London, pp 291–303

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rendall D, Di Fiore A (2007) Homoplasy, homology, and the perceived special status of behavior in evolution. J Hum Evol 52:504–521

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shettleworth S (2009) The evolution of comparative cognition: Is the snark still a boojum? Behav Process 80:210–217

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shettleworth S (2012) Modularity, Comparative Cognition, and Human Uniqueness. Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 367:2794–2802

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sober E (2005) Comparative Psychology Meets Evolutionary Biology: Morgan’s canon and cladistic parsimony. Thinking With Animals: New perspectives on anthropomorphism. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 97–99

    Google Scholar 

  • Sterelny K (2003) Thought in a Hostile World: The evolution of human cognition. Oxford

  • Sterelny K (2007) Social intelligence, human intelligence, and niche construction. Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 362:719–730

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suddendorf T, Corballis M (2015) Behavioural evidence for mental time travel in nonhuman animals. Behav Brain Res 215:292–298

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suzuki T, Wheatcroft D, Griesser M (2016) Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls. Nat Commun 7:10986

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tinbergen N (ed) (1963) On aims and methods of ethology. Zeit. Tierpychol. 20, 410–433. Reprinted in Bolhuis and Verhulst, eds., Tinbergen’s Legacy: Function and Mechanism in Behavioral Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–24

  • Tomasello M (1999) The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Townsend S, Koski S, Byrne R, Slocombe K, Bickel B, Boekle M, Goncalves I, Burkart J, Flower T, Gaunet F, Glock H-J, Gruber T, Jansen D, Liebal K, Linke A, Miklosi A, Moore R, van Schaik C, Stoll S, Vail A, Waller B, Wild M, Zuberbuhler K, Manser M (2017) Exorcising Grice’s Ghost: an empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals. Biol Rev 92:1427–1433

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tulving E (2005) Episodic memory and autonoesis: uniquely human? In: Terrace H, Metcalfe J (eds) The Missing Link in Cognition: Origins of self-reflective consciousness. Oxford, pp 3–56

  • Vonk J, Shackelford T (2012) Comparative Evolutionary Psychology: A united discipline for the study of evolved traits. In T. Shackelford and J. Vonk, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology (Oxford): 547–560

  • Wagner G (2001) Characters, Units, and Natural Kinds: An Introduction. In: Wagner G (ed) The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology. Academic Press, San Diego

    Google Scholar 

  • Wagner G (2007) The developmental genetics of homology. Nat Rev Genet 8:473–479

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wagner G (2014) Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wagner G, Laublicher M (2000) Character Identification in Evolutionary Biology: The role of the organism. Theory in Biosciences 119:20–40

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson J (2021) Determinables and Determinates. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), E. Zalta, ed. URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/determinate-determinables/

  • Whitehead H, Laland K, Rendell L, Thorogood R, Whiten A (2019) The reach of gene-culture co-evolution in animals. Nat Commun 10:10293

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whiten A (2019) Twenty questions about cultural gadgets. Behav Brain Sci 42:40–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whiten A, Erdal D (2012) The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins. Philosophical Trans Royal Soc B 367:2119–2129

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Paul Griffiths above all for a year of fruitful interactions with him and those in his Theory and Method in Biosciences research group (especially Pierrick Bourrat, Stefan Gawronski, Kate Lynch, Peter Takacs, Joshua Christie, Elena Walsh, Axel Constant, and Wesley Fang) during an Anderson Fellowship research visit at the University of Sydney in 2019. This paper and those to follow are consequences of the fellowship. Paul, Stephen Downes, and Matthew Sims all provided helpful comments on one or another draft, and Paul and Peter provided many helpful suggestions for additional research. I was also helped greatly by questions from audiences at the many institutions where I gave talks (many online) based on the then-current draft in 2020 and 2021: University of Edinburgh, Kings College London, University of Sussex, University of Groningen, University of Iowa, TU-Berlin, University of Warwick, University of Sheffield, and the Max Planck School of Cognition. Finally, I thank an anonymous reviewer for this journal for comments that prompted important clarifications in the penultimate draft.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, 260 EPB, 52242, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Carrie Figdor

Authors
  1. Carrie Figdor
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carrie Figdor.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Figdor, C. What could cognition be, if not human cognition?: Individuating cognitive abilities in the light of evolution. Biol Philos 37, 52 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-022-09880-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-022-09880-z

Search

Navigation