15 - Varying Views of Animal and Human Cognition

Abstract

This chapter discusses the varying views of animal and human cognition. The term “cognitive ethology” currently connotes and denotes more than what is represented in this chapter. It includes current descendants of behavioristic learning theory, evolutionary epistemology, evolutionary psychology, and the recent comparative turn in cognitive science. These several approaches, despite their considerable overlap, often appear independent and even ignorant of one another. Although each approach may indeed need the space to work out its own conceptual and methodological preoccupations without confounding interference from other views, a utopian spirit envisages an ultimate coming together, a more comprehensive realization of the synthetic approach to animal cognition. Continuity between human and animal minds offers a two-way street: contemplation of animals in human terms, or of humans in animal terms. One could either humanize the brutes or brutalize the humans. In conclusion, it is worth quoting Niko Tinbergen who said that it is useful both to distinguish between them and to insist that a comprehensive, coherent science of ethology has to give equal attention to each of them and to their integration. A very similar statement applies to the varying views of animal and human cognition.