The aim of the article is to present a model of causal relations that is based on what is known about human causal reasoning and that forms guidelines for implementations in robots. I argue for two theses concerning human cognition. The first is that human causal cognition, in contrast to that of other animals, is based on the understanding of the forces that are involved. The second thesis is that humans think about causality in terms of events. I present a (...) two-vector model of events, developed by Gärdenfors and Warglien, which states that an event is represented in terms of two main components – the force of an action that drives the event, and the result of its application. Apart from the causal mapping, the event model contains representations of a patient, an agent, and possibly some other roles. Agents and patients are objects (animate or inanimate) that have different properties. Following my theory of conceptual spaces, they can be described as vectors of property values. At least two spaces are needed to describe an event, an action space and a result space. The result of an event is modeled as a vector representing the change of properties of the patient before and after the event. In robotics the focus has been on describing results. The proposed model also includes the causal part of events, typically described as an action. A central part of an event category is the mapping from actions to results. This mapping contains the central information about causal relations. In applications of the two-vector model, the central problem is how the event mapping can be learned in a way that is amenable to implementations in robots. Three processes are central for event cognition: causal thinking, control of action and learning by generalization. Although it is not yet clear which is the best way to model how the mappings can be learned, they should be constrained by three corresponding mathematical properties: monotonicity (related to qualitative causal thinking); continuity (plays a key role in activities of action control); and convexity (facilitates generalization and the categorization of events). I argue that Bayesian models are not suitable for these purposes, but some more geometrically oriented approach to event mappings should be used. (shrink)

Cumulative technological culture can be defined as the progressive diversification, complexification, and enhancement of technological traits through generations. An outstanding issue is to specify the cognitive bases of this phenomenon. Based on the literature, we identified four potential cognitive factors: namely, theory-of-mind, technical-reasoning, creativity, and fluid-cognitive skills. The goal of the present study was to test which of these factors—or a combination thereof—best predicted the cumulative performance in two experimental, micro-society conditions differing in the nature of the interaction allowed between (...) participants. The task was to build the highest possible tower. Participants were also assessed on the four aforementioned cognitive factors in order to predict cumulative performance and attractiveness. Our findings indicate that technical-reasoning skills are the best predictor of cumulative performance, even if their role may be restricted to the specific technological domain. Theory-of-mind skills may have a facilitator role, particularly in the Communication condition. Creativity can also help in the generation of novel ideas, but it is not sufficient to support innovation. Finally, fluid cognition is not involved in cumulative technological culture. Taken together, these findings suggest that domain-specific knowledge remains critical for explaining cumulative technological culture. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) research enjoyed an initial period of enthusiasm in the 1970s and 80s. But this enthusiasm was tempered by a long interlude of frustration when genuinely useful AI applications failed to be forthcoming. Today, we are experiencing once again a period of enthusiasm, fired above all by the successes of the technology of deep neural networks or deep machine learning. In this paper we draw attention to what we take to be serious problems underlying current views of artificial (...) intelligence encouraged by these successes, especially in the domain of language processing. We then show an alternative approach to language-centric AI, in which we identify a role for philosophy. (shrink)

This article questions traditional approaches to the study of primate cognition. Because of a widespread assumption that cognition in non-human primates is genetically encoded, these approaches neglect how profoundly apes’ cultural rearing experiences affect test results. We describe how three advanced cognitive abilities – imitation, theory of mind and language – emerged in bonobos maturing in a Pan/Homo culture.

Cet article recense et discute le récent livre de Joëlle Proust, Les animaux pensent-ils ?. Proust s'appuie sur les récents développements en psychologie animale et en éthologie pour fournir des réponses nouvelles à des questions philosophiques traditionnelles, comme « les animaux pensent-ils » ou « les animaux parlent-ils ? ». Ce livre est à recommander aussi bien aux étudiants qu'aux chercheurs confirmés. Toutefois, malgré son intérêt, je souligne une limite critique de l'approche de Proust : plusieurs arguments souffrent du fait (...) que les positions que Joëlle Proust défend sont insuffisamment inspirées par une perspective évolutionniste et écologique. Je mets en avant les mérites d'une approche évolutionniste et écologique de la cognition animale. (shrink)

I show that there are good arguments and evidence to boot that support the language as an instrument of thought hypothesis. The underlying mechanisms of language, comprising of expressions structured hierarchically and recursively, provide a perspective (in the form of a conceptual structure) on the world, for it is only via language that certain perspectives are avail- able to us and to our thought processes. These mechanisms provide us with a uniquely human way of thinking and talking about the world (...) that is different to the sort of thinking we share with other animals. If the primary function of language were communication then one would expect that the underlying mechanisms of language will be structured in a way that favours successful communication. I show that not only is this not the case, but that the underlying mechanisms of language are in fact structured in a way to maximise computational efficiency, even if it means causing communicative problems. Moreover, I discuss evidence from comparative, neuropatho- logical, developmental, and neuroscientific evidence that supports the claim that language is an instrument of thought. (shrink)

We argue that many intuitions do not have conscious propositional contents. In particular, many of the intuitions had in response to philosophical thought experiments, like Gettier cases, do not have such contents. They are more like hunches, urgings, murky feelings, and twinges. Our view thus goes against the received view of intuitions in philosophy, which we call Mainstream Propositionalism. Our positive view is that many thought-experimental intuitions are conscious, spontaneous, non-theoretical, non-propositional psychological states that often motivate belief revision, but they (...) require interpretation, in light of background beliefs, before a subject can form a propositional judgment as a consequence of them. We call our view Interpretationalism. We argue (i) that Interpretationalism avoids the problems that beset Mainstream Propositionalism and (ii) that our view meshes well with empirical results in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

Whether non-human animals can have episodic memories remains the subject of extensive debate. A number of prominent memory researchers defend the view that animals do not have the same kind of episodic memory as humans do, whereas others argue that some animals have episodic-like memory—i.e., they can remember what, where and when an event happened. Defining what constitutes episodic memory has proven to be difficult. In this paper, I propose a dual systems account and provide evidence for a distinction between (...) event memory and episodic memory. Event memory is a perceptual system that evolved to support adaptive short-term goal processing, whereas episodic memory is based on narratives, which bind event memories into a retrievable whole that is temporally and causally organized around subject’s goals. I argue that carefully distinguishing event memory from episodic memory can help resolve the debate. (shrink)

Anthropocentric biases manifest themselves in two different ways in research on animal cognition. Some researchers claim that only humans have the capacity for reasoning, beliefs, and interests; and others attribute mental concepts to nonhuman animals on the basis of behavioral evidence, and they conceive of animal cognition in more or less human terms. Both approaches overlook the fact that language-use deeply informs mental states, such that comparing human mental states to the mental states of nonlinguistic animals is misguided. In order (...) to avoid both pitfalls -- assuming that animals have mental lives just like we do, or assuming that they have no mental lives at all -- I argue for a functional methodological approach. Researchers should study animal cognition by identifying environmental inputs, the functional role of internal states, and behavioral outputs. Doing so will allow for cross-species comparisons in a way that the use of folk psychological terms does not. (shrink)

In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...) of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations. (shrink)

Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the (...) universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of “universal,” we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition.Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills. (shrink)

The linguistic and cognitive sciences have severely underestimated the degree of linguistic diversity in the world. Part of the reason for this is that we have projected assumptions based on English and familiar languages onto the rest. We focus on some distortions this has introduced, especially in the study of semantics.

We are in vehement agreement with most of Vaesen's key claims. But Vaesen fails to consider or rebut the possibility that there are deep causal dependencies among the various cognitive traits he identifies as uniquely human. We argue that is one such linchpin trait in the evolution of human tool use, social intelligence, language, and culture.

Vaesen disregards a plausible alternative to his position, and so fails to offer a compelling argument for unique cognitive mechanisms. We suggest an ecological alternative, according to which divergent relationships between organism and environment, not exotic neuroanatomy, are responsible for unique cognitive capacities. This approach is pertinent to claims about primate cognition; and on this basis, we argue that Vaesen's inference from unique skills to unique mechanisms is unwarranted.

A theory of how concept formation begins is presented that accounts for conceptual activity in the first year of life, shows how increasing conceptual complexity comes about, and predicts the order in which new types of information accrue to the conceptual system. In a compromise between nativist and empiricist views, it offers a single domain-general mechanism that redescribes attended spatiotemporal information into an iconic form. The outputs of this mechanism consist of types of spatial information that we know infants attend (...) to in the first months of life. These primitives form the initial basis of concept formation, allow explicit preverbal thought, such as recall, inferences, and simple mental problem solving, and support early language learning. The theory details how spatial concepts become associated with bodily feelings of force and trying. It also explains why concepts of emotions, sensory concepts such as color, and theory of mind concepts are necessarily later acquisitions because they lack contact with spatial descriptions to interpret unstructured internal experiences. Finally, commonalities between the concepts of preverbal infants and nonhuman primates are discussed. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debates about causation are dominated by two approaches, which are often referred to as difference-making and causal process approaches to causation, respectively. I provide a characterization of the dialectic between these two approaches, on which that dialectic turns crucially on the question as to whether our common sense concept of causation involves a commitment to locality – i.e., to the claim that causal relations are always subject to spatial constraints. I then argue that we can extract from existing (...) work on perceptual judgement (specifically work that invokes the notion of a simple theory of perception) materials for an argument in favour of a positive answer to that question, and that this work can also help to bring out a distinctive kind of role that a commitment to locality plays in our reasoning about causal relationships. (shrink)

This article has two goals. First, it synthesizes and critically assesses current scientific knowledge about the cognitive bases of human tool use. Second, it shows how the cognitive traits reviewed help to explain why technological accumulation evolved so markedly in humans, and so modestly in apes.

Primatologists generally agree that monkeys lack higher-order intentional capacities related to theory of mind. Yet the discovery of the so-called "mirror neurons" in monkeys suggests to many neuroscientists that they have the rudiments of intentional understanding. Given a standard philosophical view about intentional understanding, which requires higher-order intentionahty, a paradox arises. Different ways of resolving the paradox are assessed, using evidence from neural, cognitive, and behavioral studies of humans and monkeys. A decisive resolution to the paradox requires substantial additional empirical (...) work and perhaps a rejection of the standard philosophical view. (shrink)

Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate (...) the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level specification as to where human and nonhuman animals' abilities to approximate a PSS are similar and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds. (shrink)

Autistic-spectrum conditions and psychotic-spectrum conditions (mainly schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression) represent two major suites of disorders of human cognition, affect, and behavior that involve altered development and function of the social brain. We describe evidence that a large set of phenotypic traits exhibit diametrically opposite phenotypes in autistic-spectrum versus psychotic-spectrum conditions, with a focus on schizophrenia. This suite of traits is inter-correlated, in that autism involves a general pattern of constrained overgrowth, whereas schizophrenia involves undergrowth. These disorders also (...) exhibit diametric patterns for traits related to social brain development, including aspects of gaze, agency, social cognition, local versus global processing, language, and behavior. Social cognition is thus underdeveloped in autistic-spectrum conditions and hyper-developed on the psychotic spectrum.;>We propose and evaluate a novel hypothesis that may help to explain these diametric phenotypes: that the development of these two sets of conditions is mediated in part by alterations of genomic imprinting. Evidence regarding the genetic, physiological, neurological, and psychological underpinnings of psychotic-spectrum conditions supports the hypothesis that the etiologies of these conditions involve biases towards increased relative effects from imprinted genes with maternal expression, which engender a general pattern of undergrowth. By contrast, autistic-spectrum conditions appear to involve increased relative bias towards effects of paternally expressed genes, which mediate overgrowth. This hypothesis provides a simple yet comprehensive theory, grounded in evolutionary biology and genetics, for understanding the causes and phenotypes of autistic-spectrum and psychotic-spectrum conditions. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether evolutionary principles are compatible with epiphenomenalism, and argues for an affirmative answer. A general summary of epiphenomenalism is provided, along with certain specifications relevant to the issues of this paper. The central argument against compatibility is stated and rebutted. A specially powerful version of the argument, due to William James (1890), is stated. The apparent power of this argument is explained as resulting from a problem about our understanding of pleasure and an equivocation on (...) 'explanation'. Finally, an argument by Plantinga (2004), which applies to beliefs rather than phenomenal qualities, is stated and rebutted. (shrink)

This paper examines the recent literature on meta-cognitive processes in non-human animals, arguing that in each case the data admit of a simpler, purely first-order, explanation. The topics discussed include the alleged monitoring of states of certainty and uncertainty, the capacity to know whether or not one has perceived something, and the capacity to know whether or not the information needed to solve some problem is stored in memory. The first-order explanations advanced all assume that beliefs and desires come in (...) various different _strengths_, or _degrees_. (shrink)

Researchers have begun to explore animals' capacities for uncertainty monitoring and metacognition. This exploration could extend the study of animal self-awareness and establish the relationship of self-awareness to other-awareness. It could sharpen descriptions of metacognition in the human literature and suggest the earliest roots of metacognition in human development. We summarize research on uncertainty monitoring by humans, monkeys, and a dolphin within perceptual and metamemory tasks. We extend phylogenetically the search for metacognitive capacities by considering studies that have tested less (...) cognitively sophisticated species. By using the same uncertainty-monitoring paradigms across species, it should be possible to map the phylogenetic distribution of metacognition and illuminate the emergence of mind. We provide a unifying formal description of animals' performances and examine the optimality of their decisional strategies. Finally, we interpret animals' and humans' nearly identical performances psychologically. Low-level, stimulus-based accounts cannot explain the phenomena. The results suggest granting animals a higher-level decision-making process that involves criterion setting using controlled cognitive processes. This conclusion raises the difficult question of animal consciousness. The results show that animals have functional features of or parallels to human conscious cognition. Remaining questions are whether animals also have the phenomenal features that are the feeling/knowing states of human conscious cognition, and whether the present paradigms can be extended to demonstrate that they do. Thus, the comparative study of metacognition potentially grounds the systematic study of animal consciousness. Key Words: cognition; comparative cognition; consciousness; memory monitoring; metacognition; metamemory; self-awareness; uncertainty; uncertainty monitoring. (shrink)

According to higher-order thought accounts of phenomenal consciousness it is unlikely that many non-human animals undergo phenomenally conscious experiences. Many people believe that this result would have deep and far-reaching consequences. More specifically, they believe that the absence of phenomenal consciousness from the rest of the animal kingdom must mark a radical and theoretically significant divide between ourselves and other animals, with important implications for comparative psychology. I shall argue that this belief is mistaken. Since phenomenal consciousness might be almost (...) epiphenomenal in its functioning within human cognition, its absence in animals may signify only relatively trivial differences in cognitive architecture. Our temptation to think otherwise arises partly as a side-effect of imaginative identification with animal experiences, and partly from mistaken beliefs concerning the aspects of common-sense psychology that carry the main explanatory burden, whether applied to humans or to non-human animals. (shrink)

Theories concerning the structure, or format, of mental representation should (1) be formulated in mechanistic, rather than metaphorical terms; (2) do justice to several philosophical intuitions about mental representation; and (3) explain the human capacity to predict the consequences of worldly alterations (i.e., to think before we act). The hypothesis that thinking involves the application of syntax-sensitive inference rules to syntactically structured mental representations has been said to satisfy all three conditions. An alternative hypothesis is that thinking requires the construction (...) and manipulation of the cognitive equivalent of scale models. A reading of this hypothesis is provided that satisfies condition (1) and which, even though it may not fully satisfy condition (2), turns out (in light of the frame problem) to be the only known way to satisfy condition (3). (shrink)

Not all models are explanatory. Some models are data summaries. Some models sketch explanations but leave crucial details unspecified or hidden behind filler terms. Some models are used to conjecture a how-possibly explanation without regard to whether it is a how-actually explanation. I use the Hodgkin and Huxley model of the action potential to illustrate these ways that models can be useful without explaining. I then use the subsequent development of the explanation of the action potential to show what is (...) required of an adequate mechanistic model. Mechanistic models are explanatory. (shrink)

This paper explores a variety of different versions of the thesis that natural language is involved in human thinking. It distinguishes amongst strong and weak forms of this thesis, dismissing some as implausibly strong and others as uninterestingly weak. Strong forms dismissed include the view that language is conceptually necessary for thought (endorsed by many philosophers) and the view that language is _de facto_ the medium of all human conceptual thinking (endorsed by many philosophers and social scientists). Weak forms include (...) the view that language is necessary for the acquisition of many human concepts, and the view that language can serve to scaffold human thought processes. The paper also discusses the thesis that language may be the medium of _conscious_ propositional thinking, but argues that this cannot be its most fundamental cognitive role. The idea is then proposed that natural language is the medium for non-domain-specific thinking, serving to integrate the outputs of a variety of domain-specific conceptual faculties (or central-cognitive ‘quasi-modules’). Recent experimental evidence in support of this idea is reviewed, and the implications of the idea are discussed, especially for our conception of the architecture of human cognition. Finally, some further kinds of evidence which might serve to corroborate or refute the hypothesis are mentioned. The overall goal of the paper is to review a wide variety of accounts of the cognitive function of natural language, integrating a number of different kinds of evidence and theoretical consideration in order to propose and elaborate the most plausible candidate. (shrink)

Hurley is right to reject the dichotomy between intentional agents and mere stimulus/response habit machines, and she is also right in thinking that it is important to map the space of systems for the adaptive control of behaviour. So there is much in this paper with which I agree. My disagreement concerns folk psychology. Hurley thinks that control space can be charted by asking whether and to what extent animals are intentional agents. In contrast, I doubt that the concepts of (...) folk psychology, especially folk psychology construed as an interpretative practice, are the right mapping tools. If the main function of folk psychology is to make sense of one another, coordinate joint action, or make decisions about moral and legal responsibility, then there is no point in applying folk psychological notions to nonhuman minds. These interpretative functions simply do not arise for our interaction with nonhuman minds, and if folk psychology serves largely as a social tool serving them, there is no need to apply it to nonhumans, nor is there a reasonable expectation that we can usefully do so. If folk psychology does not even carve our sensing and control mechanisms at the joints, if it is not a good theory of human cognitive architecture, then it is not likely to be wellsuited for describing those of nonhuman agents. (shrink)

The question of whether chimpanzees, like humans, reason about unobservable mental states remains highly controversial. On one account, chimpanzees are seen as possessing a psychological system for social cognition that represents and reasons about behaviors alone. A competing account allows that the chimpanzee's social cognition system additionally construes the behaviors it represents in terms of mental states. Because the range of behaviors that each of the two systems can generate is not currently known, and because the latter system depends upon (...) the former, determining the presence of this latter system in chimpanzees is a far more difficult task than has been assumed. We call for recognition of this problem, and a shift from experimental paradigms that cannot resolve this question, to ones that might allow researchers to intelligently determine when it is necessary to postulate the presence of a system which reasons about both behavior and mental states. (shrink)

Do non-human animals have rights? The answer to this question depends on whether animals have morally relevant mental properties. Mindreading is the human activity of ascribing mental states to other organisms. Current knowledge about the evolution and cognitive structure of mindreading indicates that human ascriptions of mental states to non-human animals are very inaccurate. The accuracy of human mindreading can be improved with the help of scientific studies of animal minds. But the scientific studies by themselves do not by themselves (...) solve the problem of how to map psychological similarities (and differences) between humans and animals onto a distinction between morally relevant and morally irrelevant mental properties. The current limitations of human mindreading – whether scientifically aided or not – have practical consequences for the rational justification of claims about which rights (if any) non-human animals should be accorded. (shrink)

This paper starts from an assumption defended in the author's previous work. This is that distinctivelyhuman flexible and creative theoretical thinking can be explained in terms of the interactions of a variety of modular systems, with the addition of just a few amodular components and dispositions. On the basis of that assumption it is argued that distinctively human practical reasoning, too, can be understood in modular terms. The upshot is that there is nothing in the human psyche that requires any (...) significant retreat from a thesis of massively modular mental organization. (shrink)

The emulation theory of representation is developed and explored as a framework that can revealingly synthesize a wide variety of representational functions of the brain. The framework is based on constructs from control theory (forward models) and signal processing (Kalman filters). The idea is that in addition to simply engaging with the body and environment, the brain constructs neural circuits that act as models of the body and environment. During overt sensorimotor engagement, these models are driven by efference copies in (...) parallel with the body and environment, in order to provide expectations of the sensory feedback, and to enhance and process sensory information. These models can also be run off-line in order to produce imagery, estimate outcomes of different actions, and evaluate and develop motor plans. The framework is initially developed within the context of motor control, where it has been shown that inner models running in parallel with the body can reduce the effects of feedback delay problems. The same mechanisms can account for motor imagery as the off-line driving of the emulator via efference copies. The framework is extended to account for visual imagery as the off-line driving of an emulator of the motor-visual loop. I also show how such systems can provide for amodal spatial imagery. Perception, including visual perception, results from such models being used to form expectations of, and to interpret, sensory input. I close by briefly outlining other cognitive functions that might also be synthesized within this framework, including reasoning, theory of mind phenomena, and language. Key Words: efference copies; emulation theory of representation; forward models; Kalman filters; motor control; motor imagery; perception; visual imagery. (shrink)

I identify three dominant positions in the philosophy of mind on the nature and distribution of consciousness: the exclusive HOT position, the inclusive HOT position, and the COLD position. I argue that each of these positions has its own rather counterintuitive consequence and, as a result, is not entirely satisfying. To avoid these consequences, I argue, a common assumption of the dominant positions ought to be rejected -- namely, that to be conscious of one's mental states is to be conscious (...) that one has them. I go on to show that once this assumption is rejected, an alternative account of consciousness -- the SO account -- emerges. I develop the SO account in the latter half of the paper, showing how it offers a plausible explanation of the difference between conscious and unconscious mental states. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Comparative psychology assesses cognitive abilities and capacities of non-human animals and humans. Based on performance differences and similarities in various species in cognitive tests, it is inferred how their minds work and reconstructed how cognition might have evolved. Critically, such species comparisons are only valid and meaningful if the tasks truly capture individual and inter-specific variation in cognitive abilities rather than contextual variables that might affect task performance. Unlike in human test psychology, however, cognitive tasks for non-human primates (and most (...) other animals) have been rarely evaluated regarding their measurement validity. We review recent studies that address how non-cognitive factors affect performance in a set of commonly used cognitive tasks, and if cognitive tests truly measure individual variation in cognitive abilities. We find that individual differences in emotional and motivational factors primarily affect performance via attention. Hence, it is crucial to systematically control for attention during cognitive tasks to obtain valid and reliable results. Aspects of test design, however, can also have a substantial effect on cognitive performance. We conclude that non-cognitive factors are a minor source of measurement error if acknowledged and properly controlled for. It is essential, however, to validate and eventually re-design several primate cognition tasks in order to ascertain that they capture the cognitive abilities they were designed to measure. This will provide a more solid base for future cognitive comparisons within primates but also across a wider range of non-human animal species. (shrink)

Many animal species use tools, but human technical engagement is more complex. We argue that there is coevolution between technical engagement and advanced forms of causal cognition in the human lineage. As an analytic tool, we present a classification of different forms of causal thinking. Human causal thinking has become detached from space and time, so that instead of just reacting to perceptual input, our minds can simulate actions and forces and their causal consequences. Our main thesis is that, unlike (...) the situation for other primate species, an increasing emphasis on technical engagement made some hominins capable of reasoning about the forces involved in causal processes. This thesis is supported in three ways: We compare the casual thinking about forces of hominins with that of other primates. We analyze the causal thinking required for Stone Age hunting technologies such as throwing spears, bow hunting and the use of poisoned arrows, arguing that they may serve as examples of the expansion of casual cognition about forces. We present neurophysiological results that indicate the facilitation of advanced causal thinking. (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)

The central issue in the debate on animal minds is the issue of mindreading. This complicated cognitive ability belongs to the key elements of social cognition — as a form of adapting to specific circumstances connected with living in groups, it enables the reading of the mental states of other individuals, e.g. intentions, desires, and beliefs as well as the adaptation of one’s own behavior to this information. The primary purpose of the article is to present the main philosophical controversies (...) which arise in the discussion of whether this ability can be attributed to animals; if so, then to what extent. Philosophical discussions concentrate on methodological issues: alternative interpretational models of animal behavior, anthropomorphism, experimental protocols, and gradeability of mindreading as well as the nature of the mind. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the extent to which nonhuman animals are conscious. Most important perhaps is what criteria should be used in making such a determination.

To identify the neural components that make a brain ready for language, it is important to have well defined linguistic phenotypes, to know precisely what language is. There are two central features to language: the capacity to form signs (words), and the capacity to combine them into complex structures. We must determine how the human brain enables these capacities. A sign is a link between a perceptual form and a conceptual meaning. Acoustic elements and content elements, are already brain-internal in (...) non-human animals, but as categorical systems linked with brain-external elements. Being indexically tied to objects of the world, they cannot freely link to form signs. A crucial property of a language-ready brain is the capacity to process perceptual forms and contents offline, detached from any brain-external phenomena, so their “representations” may be linked into signs. These brain systems appear to have pleiotropic effects on a variety of phenotypic traits and not to be specifically designed for language. Syntax combines signs, so the combination of two signs operates simultaneously on their meaning and form. The operation combining the meanings long antedates its function in language: the primitive mode of predication operative in representing some information about an object. The combination of the forms is enabled by the capacity of the brain to segment vocal and visual information into discrete elements. Discrete temporal units have order and juxtaposition, and vocal units have intonation, length, and stress. These are primitive combinatorial processes. So the prior properties of the physical and conceptual elements of the sign introduce combinatoriality into the linguistic system, and from these primitive combinatorial systems derive concatenation in phonology and combination in morphosyntax. Given the nature of language, a key feature to our understanding of the language-ready brain is to be found in the mechanisms in human brains that enable the unique means of representation that allow perceptual forms and contents to be linked into signs. (shrink)

In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are “watched” by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot—named Kismet and invented at MIT—is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with existing (...) economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are “watched” by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet. (shrink)

In our opinion, the discontinuity between extant human and nonhuman minds is much broader and deeper than most researchers admit. We are happy to report that Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) target article strongly corroborates our unpopular hypothesis, and that the comparative evidence, in turn, bolsters E&L's provocative argument. Both a Universal Grammar and the “mental continuity” between human and nonhuman minds turn out to be modern myths.

The quest to understand has been heading towards an impasse, when comparative psychology compares primarily individuals that are not representative of their species. Captives experience such divergent socioecological niches that they cannot stand for their wild counterparts. Only after removing ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism will we be able to progress in our understanding of.