Lexicon of Arguments

Philosophical and Scientific Issues in Dispute
 
[german]


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Sc. Camps
Theses I
Theses II

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I 239
Animal/mind/consciousness/Proust: what about the ability of animals to form hypotheses that might point to a "theory of the mind"? This is true only for primates and large sea mammals, not for dogs and cats, who have acquired their relatively comprehensive communication repertoire only through domestication and interaction with us.
Cf. >Theory of Mind.
E.g. shared attention: shared attention apparently implies a recognition of the fact that another has discovered an interesting object with its perception.
From this, however, the animal does not conceive the idea that its conspecific or the other has seen an object or knows a fact!
I 240
Primates do not perform spontaneous pointing gestures! They can only be teached if they are promised food.
>Pointing, cf. >Ostensive definition, >Gestures.
Culture/Animal/Proust: e.g. washing potatoes: here nothing points to a pedagogic concern. The slowness of appropriation suggests that innovation is not acquired by either targeted education or imitation, it is about "stimulus intensification": the simple spatial proximity of a group member to the target object arouses the interest of the conspecifics for this type of object and leads to the testing of different possibilities of use.
Group behavior: also appeasement, etc. can be explained by simple social cooperation without mental representations. The animals do not need to know why they are doing the gestures.
>Group behavior/Psychology.
Tactical deception maneuvers are often found in primates.
I 242
Instead of assuming that animals "lie", it is now acknowledged that these behaviors can be explained by the learning of effective actions in a particular situation.
>Learning, >Behavior.

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