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The Semantic Problem(s) with Research on Animal Mind‐Reading

Buckner, Cameron (2014) The Semantic Problem(s) with Research on Animal Mind‐Reading. Mind & Language, 29 (5). pp. 566-589.

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Abstract

Philosophers and cognitive scientists have worried that research on animal mind‐reading faces a ‘logical problem’: the difficulty of experimentally determining whether animals represent mental states (e.g. seeing) or merely the observable evidence (e.g. line‐of‐gaze) for those mental states. The most impressive attempt to confront this problem has been mounted recently by Robert Lurz. However, Lurz' approach faces its own logical problem, revealing this challenge to be a special case of the more general problem of distal content. Moreover, participants in this debate do not agree on criteria for representation. As such, future debate should either abandon the representational idiom or confront underlying semantic disagreements.


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Item Type: Published Article or Volume
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Buckner, Cameroncjbuckner@uh.edu
Keywords: theory of mind representation parsimony Morgan's Canon
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Psychology > Comparative Psychology and Ethology
Depositing User: Dr. Cameron Buckner
Date Deposited: 16 Aug 2019 11:58
Last Modified: 16 Aug 2019 11:58
Item ID: 16334
Journal or Publication Title: Mind & Language
Official URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/m...
DOI or Unique Handle: 10.1111/mila.12066
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Psychology > Comparative Psychology and Ethology
Date: 2014
Page Range: pp. 566-589
Volume: 29
Number: 5
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/16334

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