Partial preview of the text
Download What do Animal Think - Lecture Notes | HNRS 308 and more Study notes School management&administration in PDF only on Docsity!
w avenues ay in the will be of ddition, I sing ideas welcome ctions on CHAPTER I What do animals think? Dale Jamieson I, INTRODUCTION You may have noticed that the title of this essay is ambiguous, Asking what animals think could be part of an inquiry into animal public opinion, focusing perhaps on such questions as whar apes think about the Endan- gered Species Act or whether frogs prefer ‘lom Waits to Leonard Cohen, Or if you read the right punctuation into the tide you might s an exclamation of surprise: “What! Do animals think?” What J am actu- ally concerned with in this essay is how we should chink about specifying exactly what it is that a particular animal thinks on a particular occasion. Some would say that I am concerned with the problem of content as it applies to non-human animals. ‘The first response to the question of what animals think may be to say thar chey think thoughts. This is harmless, so Jong as we do not succumb to the temprarion of reading psychology or ontology directly off of the language. I lowever, it is downright harmful if, after assimilating chinking to having a thought, we go on to suppose that having a thought is the same as having a propositional attitude. At the outset, anyway, I want to leave open a wide range of possibilities includiag whether animal thinking implies having propositional attitudes; and if ir does, the meaning, status, and nature of these propositional attitudes, For these reasons, unless 1 say otherwise, I will use expressions such as “thinking” and “having a thought” in neutral, common-sense ways, and | will cake believing and desiring as examples of thinking, and beliefs and desires as examples of thoughts. Why should we be interested in whar animals think? I am interested in this qu Lhave argued that a plausible theary of value is one which distinguishes 2 ir as stion because of how it relates to other questions. In earlier work nks tn Beaczice Longucnesse for her com his probing questions, not all of which I Imv