Price loading...

Seven Challenges for the Science of Animal Minds

Cognition & Cognitive Psychology

Price data last checked 108 day(s) ago - refreshing...

View at Amazon

Price History & Forecast

No Price Data Available

Price history will appear here once data is collected from Amazon.

Price Distribution

No price data available for histogram

Description

The scientific study of animal minds is difficult. This book examines the most significant reasons this is so: seven challenges for the science to overcome. Researchers are aware of these challenges, but few take any of them head-on, and none address them collectively. Despite this focus on challenges, the book's attitude is optimistic rather than critical; these are challenges for the science, not challenges to the science. Researchers have made substantial progress as things are. But taking the challenges head-on can help build an even stronger, more vibrant science. The seven challenges are: 1) underdetermination of theory by data, 2) anthropomorphic bias, 3) the difficulty of modeling cognitive processes, 4) integrating across disciplines, 5) ecological validity, 6) small sample sizes, and 7) measuring consciousness. For each, the book suggests rethinking the challenge and reorienting our attempts to address it. These approaches are novel, general ways of thinking that will help researchers work through the challenges, and perhaps find solutions appropriate to their own research. Each of the main chapters takes on one challenge. Each also includes an empirical case study, from social reasoning in chimpanzees, to foraging in honeybees, to consciousness in octopuses. Along the way, a big-picture framework emerges for drawing conclusions about animal minds based on experimental evidence. In this framework, the role of any individual piece of the science is limited: any individual experiment, model, claim, or argument can only tell us so much. When we are appropriately modest about each piece, conclusions about animal minds must be arrived at by holistically considering all the evidence we can get. This is a work in the philosophy of science, but it is written to be accessible to any philosopher interested in empirical issues relating to the mind, researchers in any of the related sciences, including psychology, neuroscience, ethology, and evolutionary biology, as well as intermediate to advanced students.

Product Specifications

Format: hardcover
ASIN: 0198928076
Category: Books > Subjects > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry > Cognition & Cognitive Psychology
Domain: Amazon UK
Release Date: 14 March 2025
Listed Since: 12 November 2024

Barcode

No barcode data available

Seven Challenges for the Science of Animal Minds

Price History & Forecast

No Price Data Available

Price Distribution

Description

Product Specifications

Barcode

Similar Products You Might Like

Rational Animals?

Comparative Cognition: Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence

The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics (Oxford Handbooks)

Comparative Cognition: Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence

Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Animal-Human Encounters (Critical Perspectives on Animals: Theory, Culture, Science, and Law)

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds

Behavioral Neurobiology: An integrative approach

The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition

The Science of Animal Welfare: Understanding What Animals Want

Animal Minds (Elements in Philosophy of Mind)

The Oxford Companion to Consciousness (Oxford Companion To... (Paperback))

Animal Learning and Cognition: An Introduction

Weighing Animal Welfare: Comparing Well-Being Across Species

Animal Behavior: Concepts, Methods, and Applications

Consciousness as a Scientific Concept: A Philosophy of Science Perspective: 5 (Studies in Brain and Mind, 5)

Can Animals Be Moral?

Animal Inside Essays at the ICB - Rowman & Littlefield Books

Springer - Emotions of Animals and Humans: Comparative Perspectives

Conceptual Challenges in Evolutionary Psychology: Innovative Research Strategies: 27 (Studies in Cognitive Systems)

Consciousness from a Broad Perspective: A Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Introduction: 6 (Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality, 6)

Animal Mind ― Human Mind: Report of the Dahlem Workshop on Animal Mind ― Human Mind, Berlin 1981, March 22–27: 21 (Dahlem Workshop Report, 21)

Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism

Human Minds and Animal Stories: How Narratives Make Us Care About Other Species (Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment)