In this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan’s Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been (...) duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan’s background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan’s Canon with an openness to the existence of non-humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief. (shrink)

A surge of empirical research demonstrating flexible cognition in animals and young infants has raised interest in the possibility of rational decision-making in the absence of language. A venerable position, which I here call “Classical Inferentialism”, holds that nonlinguistic agents are incapable of rational inferences. Against this position, I defend a model of nonlinguistic inferences that shows how they could be practically rational. This model vindicates the Lockean idea that we can intuitively grasp rational connections between thoughts by developing the (...) Davidsonian idea that practical inferences are at bottom categorization judgments. From this perspective, we can see how similarity-based categorization processes widely studied in human and animal psychology might count as practically rational. The solution involves a novel hybrid of internalism and externalism: intuitive inferences are psychologically rational (in the explanatory sense) given the intensional sensitivity of the similarity assessment to the internal structure of the agent's reasons for acting, but epistemically rational (in the justificatory sense) given an ecological fit between the features matched by that assessment and the structure of the agent's environment. The essay concludes by exploring empirical results that show how nonlinguistic agents can be sensitive to these similarity assessments in a way that grants them control over their opaque judgments. (shrink)

A surge of empirical research demonstrating flexible cognition in animals and young infants has raised interest in the possibility of rational decision‐making in the absence of language. A venerable position, which I here call “Classical Inferentialism”, holds that nonlinguistic agents are incapable of rational inferences. Against this position, I defend a model of nonlinguistic inferences that shows how they could be practically rational. This model vindicates the Lockean idea that we can intuitively grasp rational connections between thoughts by developing the (...) Davidsonian idea that practical inferences are at bottom categorization judgments. From this perspective, we can see how similarity‐based categorization processes widely studied in human and animal psychology might count as practically rational. The solution involves a novel hybrid of internalism and externalism: intuitive inferences are psychologically rational (in the explanatory sense) given the intensional sensitivity of the similarity assessment to the internal structure of the agent's reasons for acting, but epistemically rational (in the justificatory sense) given an ecological fit between the features matched by that assessment and the structure of the agent's environment. The essay concludes by exploring empirical results that show how nonlinguistic agents can be sensitive to these similarity assessments in a way that grants them control over their opaque judgments. (shrink)

There is a diffuse sentiment that to anthropomorphize is a mild vice that people tend to do easily and pleasingly, but that an adult well educated person should avoid. In this paper it will be provided an elucidation of ``anthropomorphism'' in the field of common sense knowledge, the issue of animal rights, and about the use of humans as a model in the scientific explanation. It will be argued for a ``constructive anthropomorphism'', i.e., the idea that anthropomorphism is a natural (...) attutude to attribute human psychological features to other individuals, no matter they are actually rational agents, or not. If we know the ``grammar'' of this attutude, we can avoid the risks in overestimating the environmental inputs towards anthropomor­phism and, at the same time, take the heuristic advantages of anthropomor­phism in the use of human mind as a model for both everyday circumstances and scientific enterprise. (shrink)

C. Lloyd Morgan is mostly known for Morgan’s canon, still a popular and frequently quoted principle in comparative psychology and ethology. There has been a fair amount of debate on the canon’s interpretation, function, and value regarding the research on animal minds, usually referring to it as an isolated principle. In this paper we rather shed light on Morgan’s overall scientific program and his vision for comparative psychology. We argue that within his program Morgan identified crucial conceptual, ontological, and methodical (...) issues, that are still fundamental to the current research on animal minds. This also highlights a new aspect of his role as one of the “founding fathers” of modern comparative psychology. In order to understand Morgan’s program, we briefly outline the historical context in which he began his work on a science of comparative psychology. We will then emphasize to what extent his taxonomy of psychological capacities, the development of his metaphysics for a comparative psychology, and his newly introduced interdisciplinary procedures justify Morgan’s distinctive approach to still rather sensitive issues. In doing so, we aim to provide a more comprehensive picture of Morgan’s methodological signature and we contend that a proper understanding of his canon can only be gained by taking it as part of this program. We finally understand his most renown considerations as part of his struggle to ascertain the limits and possibilities of the discipline he contributed to set up, and thus emphasize the need to keep the discussion going, notably on the accessibility of other minds than one’s own and on the limits of one’s research perspectives. (shrink)

The British biologist, philosopher, and psychologist Conwy Lloyd Morgan is widely regarded as one of the founders of comparative psychology. He is especially well known for his eponymous canon, which aimed to provide a rule for the interpretation of mind from behavior. Emphasizing the importance of the context in which Morgan was working—one in which casual observations of animal behavior could be found in Nature magazine every week and psychology itself was fighting for scientific legitimacy—I provide an account of Morgan’s (...) vision for the comparative psychologist qua professional psychologist. To this end, I explore the important connection between Morgan and the evolutionary theorist, philosopher, and psychologist Herbert Spencer. It is from Spencer, I contend, that Morgan inherited a number of his key epistemological and methodological concerns about the nascent science of comparative psychology. This extends all the way to the canon, which only works as intended when paired with a Spencerian understanding of mental evolution as a progressive linear sequence. Far from being an incidental residue of a pre-Darwinian time, hierarchy was intentionally built into the very core of Morgan’s scientific comparative psychology. (shrink)

Physical cognition involves a host of cognitive abilities that enable understanding and manipulation of the physical world. Corvids, the bird family that includes crows, ravens and jays, are renowned for their cognitive abilities, but still little is known about their folk physics. This thesis explores the origins of physical cognition in corvids by investigating its mechanisms, development,fitness value and phylogeny in a wide context that includes theoretical and empirical studies.String pulling is a valuable paradigm for addressing these questions. Many animals (...) can pull a string with food attached to its end, but uncovering the cognitive abilities involved in this behaviour requires further testing. Paper I reviews the string-pulling paradigm, which is one of the oldest tests of animal cognition.It is a highly suitable test for species comparisons, socio-ecological correlations, and phylogenetic questions. Paper II tests several corvids, apes and peafowl on a string-pulling task where the first pulls do not result in the food moving closer. Despite the absence of such visual feedback, most subjects pulled strings in completely, although corvids appeared to choose randomly.Tool use is the archetypical example of physical cognition. Many corvids are remarkably adept at using tools in experimental settings. Paper III reviews animal tool use in general. It is now clear that customary tool-using species do not necessarily outperform their non-tool-using relatives on tests of physical cognition. For corvids that frequently use tools in the wild, such as New Caledonian crows and‘Alalā, tool use appears to have a significant fitness value and may have resulted in morphological adaptations. Paper IV describes a novel tool-use mode in New Caledonian crows. They inserted sticks into objects and then moved away,thereby transporting both. One crow could not grasp the target object, which suggests that such insert-and-transport tool use facilitates control over unwieldy objects. Paper V briefly argues that some corvids have shown the ability to make novel causal interventions, although this question should be addressed in a clearer theoretical framework that makes testable predictions.Sensorimotor cognition is a set of fundamental cognitive abilities that enables the integration of sensory and motor information into practical behaviour. It underlies much of corvid physical cognition. Paper VI investigates the development of sensorimotor cognition in ravens. Their skills developed rapidly and exceeded those of some mammals. They reached the same final sensorimotor stage as great apes, albeit at a markedly accelerated rate. The propensity of corvids to cache objects was investigated in Paper VII. Ravens, which often cache food,frequently cached objects, but surprisingly at similar rates as non-food-caching jackdaws. New Caledonian crows mostly cached objects that resembled functional tools.Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits to animals. Fear of mistakenly anthropomorphising animals has resulted in biased principles and an uneven burden of proof, which may hinder scientific progress more than it is supposed to offer protection against making mistakes. Cognitive zoology should not be misguided by overcompensating for such potential pitfalls. (shrink)