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Animal Mental Action: Planning Among Chimpanzees

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Abstract

I offer an argument for what mental action may be like in nonhuman animals. Action planning is a type of mental action that involves a type of intention. Some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of proximal mental actions, and some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of distal mental actions. The distinction between these two types of “plan-states” is often spelled out in terms of mental content. The prominent view is that while proximal mental actions are caused by mental states with nonconceptual content, distal mental actions are caused by mental states with conceptual content. I argue that, when we are investigating animal cognition, we need a nonconceptual account for the content of intentions involved in mental actions such as action planning: non-immediate intentions. This in order to defend the claim that creatures that lack conceptual capacities are capable of entertaining plan-states, and thus of exercising mental agency in the form of action planning.

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Notes

  1. In Strawson (2003), actions are always intentional actions.

  2. Following Mele 1992, ch. 2, I assume the reality of mental causation.

  3. I shall point out that not all the friends of mental action would say that intentions are the mental antecedents of mental actions. For instance, Hieronymi (2009) disagrees with this view. Also Peacocke and Mele are doubtful as to the idea that every intentional action-event must have a mental item, such as an intention, as a significant cause. They independently, argue that an agent can, but need not, be in a position to intend to P. For P to be an intentional action, all that is required is that the agent is in a position to intend to try to P. Peacocke (2009) argues that tryings should be distinguished by intentions, while Mele (2009) holds a softer stance with regards to the possibility for an intention to count as the causal mental antecedent of a mental action.

  4. Philosophers have proposed various “dual-intention theories” (Pacherie 2008). Searle (1983) distinguishes between prior intentions and intentions in action, Brand (1984) between prospective and immediate intentions, Bratman (1987) between future-directed and present-directed intentions, Mele (1992) between distal and proximal intentions, and Pacherie (2008), who actually introduces a “trial-intention theory”, distinguishes between distal, proximal, and motor intentions.

  5. Red Colobus: middle-sized mammals. Adult males weigh about 13 kg.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers, and to my supervisors Stephen Butterfill and Bence Nanay, for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.

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    Angelica Kaufmann

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Kaufmann, A. Animal Mental Action: Planning Among Chimpanzees. Rev.Phil.Psych. 6, 745–760 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-014-0228-x

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