Papineau, David (2001) The Evolution of means-End Cognition; Why Animals Cannot Think. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Why is there a cognitive gulf between other animals and humans? Current fashion favours our greater understanding of Theory of Mind as an answer, and Language is another obvious candidate. But I think that analysis of the evolution of means-end cognitive mechanisms suggests that there may be a further significant difference: where animals will only perform those means which they (or their ancestors) have previously used as a route to some end, humans can employ observation to learn that some novel means is a route to a desired end. In short, human can learn from observation, where animals can learn only from first-hand experience.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Papineau, David
Keywords:	Evolution, cogniton, mean-end; animals
Depositing User:	Peter Machamer
Date Deposited:	05 Sep 2001
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:10
Item ID:	397
Public Domain:	No
Date:	2001
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/397

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