Content normativism and animal minds

SÁNCHEZ, NICOLÁS SEBASTIÁN

Congreso; First Graduate Conference (Online) of the Italian Association for Cognitive Science; 2021

Italian Association for Cognitive Science

Content normativism is relevant for the philosophical discussion ofanimal minds. A distinction made by Robert Brandom (2000) betweenassimilationists and differentialists may be of use to explain that relevance.That distinction tracks two different philosophical attitudes to thought, whatphilosophers see themselves doing when accounting for phenomena likeintentionality. Briefly put, differentialists are interested in describing theunique features human thought has. And assimilationists are interested infinding the continuities between human thought and non-human thought. Bothassimilationists and differentalists take a stance about content normativism.Differentialists claim that only human beings could think since we are the onlycreatures that should be considered responsible to our standards (Davidson, 1982; Haugeland, 1998; McDowell, 1996). Assimilationists, for their part, claim that there is acontinuum between human and non-human thought and take as their maintheoretical task to articulate coherent criteria for intentional ascription. Inthat regard, their attitudes towards normativity go from indifference tooutright rejection. On the one hand, systematic accounts of animal thought donot discuss the thesis, let alone endorse or reject it (cf. Allen & Bekoff, 1999; Bermúdez, 2003). On the side of rejection, many assimilationists claim thatthought is not normative (Dretske, 2001; Fodor, 1990, p. 282) or, at least, that normativity is not relevant for intentionalascription since the idea of content can be considered a "conceptualprimitive (just as much work in cognitive science does)" (Carruthers, 2015, p. 20).  In this context, contentnormativism for animal minds (CNAM, hereafter) is a theoretical middle ground.CNAM agrees with assimilationists that intentional ascription should extend tothe animal kingdom. They also agree with differentialists in that rules thatregulate cognition are important for intentional ascription. This intermediateposition is the main focus of this presentation. This presentation aims toassess CNAM’s main claim: that normativity is crucial for intentionalascription. The thesis of this work will be that that claim is hard toreconcile with the empirical study of animal minds. To make it plausible Iwill, first, describe CNAM’s approach. Then, I will critically assess it,contrasting its approach with how comparative psychology studies animalcognition. The main theses of this work are negative.