Kristin Andrews

It’s common to think that animals think. The cat thinks it is time to be fed, the monkey thinks the dominant is a threat. In order to make sense of what the other animals around us do, we ascribe mental states to them. The cat meows at the door because she wants to be let in. The monkey the monkey fails the test because he doesn’t remember the answer. We explain animal actions in terms of their mental states, just as we do with humans. One of us has argued that our science of animal minds requires that animal behavior be explained in such terms, and this doesn’t lead to a problematic use of folk psychology or anthropomorphism (Andrews 2016, 2020). By “anthropomorphism” we mean the attribution of human psychological, social, or normative properties to non-human animals “usually with the implication it is done without sound justification” (Shettleworth 2010, 477). And by “folk psychology” we mean the commonsense practice of seeing action as caused or accompanied by mental states like belief and desire, emotions, and seeing people in terms of their moods or personality traits, as well as categorizing complex behaviors as examples of grieving, communicating, or teaching (Andrews 2012). Psychologists routinely describe human behaviors in folk psychological terms, so it’s not that the categories are unscientific. The issue with using folk psychology to describe animal behavior is whether observable similarities between human and nonhuman behavior warrants thinking they involve the same psychological kind. The use of folk psychology when talking about animals need not be problematically anthropomorphic, though we need some evidentiary basis for filing animal behavior under some folk psychological category. Despite it being commonplace for humans to attribute thoughts to animals, and there being arguments in favor of doing so in science, the nature of these mental states so many are happy to see in other animals remains unclear. To help bring some focus into the discussion, we will examine the attitude of belief. In this chapter we will examine the various possible statuses of animal beliefs, and the implications of those various views for our folk practice as well as our scientific investigations.

There are two problems with many philosophical theories of the mind and language: they almost always focus exclusively on normal adult humans, excluding others such as children, people with autism, and animals, and they are often developed without regard to the relevant scientific research. In my dissertation, I explain why this is a problem. First, I argue that we should accept the existence of animal minds, and that we should use the methods of experimental psychology and cognitive ethology in order to better understand those minds. I show that one philosophical theory, Donald Davidson's account of mind, language, and communication, is inconsistent with psychological research on children with autism. I show how Davidson's theory entails the absurd conclusion that many children with autism do not have beliefs. I also argue that Daniel Dennett's intentional stance account of belief, conjoined with a few accepted facts about vervet monkey behavior, results in an armchair solution to an empirical question. Namely, the intentional stance account of belief blurs the distinction between having beliefs and having a theory of mind . Finally, I argue that the emphasis placed on belief attribution as a necessary condition for predicting intentional behavior is misguided. Rather than there being a symmetry between folk psychological prediction and explanation, I argue that we often do not use belief/desire attribution when making predictions. However, when providing psychological explanations for intentional behavior, appeal to beliefs and desires is often obligatory.