Rational Animals?

Abstract

This book focuses on one of the major debates in science today — how closely does mental processing in animals resemble mental processing in humans? It addresses the question of whether and to what extent any animal behaviour can be regarded as the result of a rational thought processes. Three key questions recur throughout the book: What kinds of behavioural tasks can animals successfully perform? What, if any, mental processes must be postulated to explain their performance at these tasks? What properties must processes have to count as rational? The book pursues these questions in relation to primates, birds and dolphins. Some chapters focus on a particular species. They describe some of the extraordinary and complex behaviour of these species — using tools to solve foraging problems, for example, or behaving in novel ways to solve complex social problems — and ask whether such behaviour should be explained in rational or merely mechanistic terms. Other chapters address more theoretical issues and ask, for example, what it means for behaviour to be rational, and whether rationality can be understood in the absence of language. The book features empirical work on rationality in primates, dolphins, and birds. The book includes an editors' introduction, which summarizes the philosophical and empirical work presented, and draws together the issues discussed by the contributors.