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Full-Text Articles in Organisms
Are Apes’ Responses To Pointing Gestures Intentional?, Olivia Sultanescu, Kristin Andrews
Are Apes’ Responses To Pointing Gestures Intentional?, Olivia Sultanescu, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
This paper examines the meaningfulness of pointing in great apes. We appeal to Hannah Ginsborg’s conception of primitive normativity, which provides an adequate criterion for establishing whether a response is meaningful, and we attempt to make room for a conception according to which there is no fundamental difference between the responses of human infants and those of other great apes to pointing gestures. This conception is an alternative to Tomasello’s view that pointing gestures and reactions to them reveal a fundamental difference between humans and other apes.
Beyond Anthropomorphism: Attributing Psychological Properties To Animals, Kristin Andrews
Beyond Anthropomorphism: Attributing Psychological Properties To Animals, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
In the context of animal cognitive research, “anthropomorphism” is defined as the attribution of uniquely human mental characteristics to non-human animals. Those who worry about anthropomorphism in research are confronted with the question of which properties are uniquely human. As animals, humans and non-human animals1 share a number of biological, morphological, relational, and spatial properties. In addition, it is widely accepted and humans and animals share some psychological properties such as the ability to fear or desire. These claims about the properties animals share with humans are often the products of empirical work.
A Role For Folk Psychology In Animal Cognition Research, Kristin Andrews
A Role For Folk Psychology In Animal Cognition Research, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
If we consider that the field of animal cognition research began with Darwin’s stories about clever animals, we can see that over the 150 years of work done in this field, there has been a slow swing back and forth between two extreme positions. One extreme is the view that other animals are very much like us, that we can use introspection in order to understand why other animals act as they do, and that no huge interpretive leap is required to understand animal minds. On the other extreme we have the view that other animals are utterly different from …