Towards ending the animal cognition war
- Debates in animal cognition are frequently polarized between the romantic view that some species have human-like causal understanding and the killjoy view that human causal reasoning is unique. These apparently endless debates are often characterized by conceptual confusions and accusations of straw-men positions. What is needed is an account of causal understanding that enables researchers to investigate both similarities and differences in cognitive abilities in an incremental evolutionary framework. Here we outline the ways in which a three-dimensional model of causal understanding fulfills these criteria. We describe how this approach clarifies what is at stake, illuminates recent experiments on both physical and social cognition, and plots a path for productive future research that avoids the romantic/killjoy dichotomy.
| Author: | Tobias Benjamin StarzakORCiDGND, Russell David GrayORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-97036 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-021-09779-1 |
| Parent Title (English): | Biology & philosophy |
| Subtitle (English): | a three-dimensional model of causal cognition |
| Publisher: | Springer Science + Business Media B.V. |
| Place of publication: | Dordrecht |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first Publication: | 2021/02/19 |
| Publishing Institution: | Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek |
| Tag: | Animal cognition; Causal understanding; Cognitive evolution; Comparative psychology; Concept of understanding |
| Volume: | 36 |
| Issue: | Article 9 |
| First Page: | 9-1 |
| Last Page: | 9-24 |
| Note: | Dieser Beitrag ist auf Grund des DEAL-Springer-Vertrages frei zugänglich. |
| Institutes/Facilities: | Institut für Philosophie II |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | Philosophie und Psychologie / Philosophie |
| open_access (DINI-Set): | open_access |
| faculties: | Fakultät für Philosophie und Erziehungswissenschaft |
| Licence (English): |  Creative Commons - CC BY 4.0 - Attribution 4.0 International |
