Abstract
Elsewhere I discussed analogies and disanalogies between Avicenna’s ideas on estimative faculty of animals and Peirce’s and Magnani’s views on animal abduction Park (2011). There are analogies between them (1) at the level of the problems, (2) at the level of the diagnosis, and (3) at the level of prognosis. Both Avicenna and Peirce-Magnani address their views on the problem of intuition and intelligence of animals. Also, they detect the main cause of the problem in the false dilemma usually posed by the participants of the controversy. Finally, they seek the solution in estimation and abduction in animals respectively that have both intuitive and intelligent elements. On the other hand, some of the disanalogies are also manifest.
This chapter was originally published as Woosuk Park, (2012), “On Animal Cognition: before and after the Beast-Machine Controversy”, L. Magnani and P. Li (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science: Western and Eastern Studies, Sapere 2, Springer, Heidelberg/Berlin, pp. 53–74.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Black, a human estimative faculty was posited in addition to the intellect “in order to account for a variety of complex human judgments that are pre-intellectual but more than merely sensible” (Black 2000, 59).
- 2.
As Black points out, Avicenna uses these examples in almost all his discussions of internal senses. For references to Avicenna’s particular texts, see footnote 9 of Black (1993, 247).
- 3.
For example, in Duns Scotus we an interesting text where various meanings of term “intention” are recognized in the context of explaining the intentionality of light in the medium: (1) an act of the will, (2) the formal reason of a thing, (3) a concept, (4) what ‘intends’ toward the object (McCarthy: p. 26).
- 4.
Paavola (2005, 131).
- 5.
- 6.
For example, he quotes the following passage from Peirce: “When a chicken first emerges from the shell, it does not try fifty random ways of appeasing its hunger, but within five minutes is picking up food, choosing as it picks, and picking what it aims to pick. That is not reasoning, because it is not done deliberately; but in every respect but that, it is just like abductive inference”. Magnani confers on the article “The proper treatment of hypothesis: a preliminary chapter, toward an examination of Humes argument against miracles, in its logic and in its history” [1901] (in Peirce 1966, p. 692). Another example could be the following discussion: “An example of instinctual (and putatively “unconscious”) abduction is given by the case of animal embodied kinesthetic/motor abilities, capable of leading to some appropriate cognitive behavior; Peirce says abduction even takes place when a new born chick picks up the right sort of corn.” This is another example, so to say, of spontaneous abduction analogous to the case of some unconscious/embodied abductive processes in humans: (Magnani 2009, p. 276).
- 7.
This interpretation of Magnani’s strategy seems to be supported strongly by his explicit announcement: “I can conclude that instinct versus inference represents a conflict we can overcome simply by observing that the work of abduction is partly explicable as a biological phenomenon and partly as a more or less ‘logical’ operation related to ‘plastic’ cognitive endowments of all organisms” (Magnani 2009, p. 267).
- 8.
English translation in the text is adopted from Barad (1995, p. 95). Original Latin text is as follows: Judicat enim ovis videns lupum eum esse Fugiendum naturali judicio, et non libero, quia non ex collation sed ex naturali instinctu hoc judicat.
- 9.
There is huge literature on Descartes’ automaton theory and its aftermath. A nice starting point could be Rosenfield (1940, 1968). Clarke still counts it as the standard account (Clarke 2003, p. 77). See also Radner and Radner (1996), Sepper (1989) and Sterrett (2002). According to Rosenfeld, “by 1737 if not earlier, the Cartesian defenders of automatism were so thoroughly beaten as to acknowledge defeat” (Rosenfeld 1940, 1968, p. 65).
- 10.
Harrison points out that “even if we concede that (2), (3) and (6) do not necessarily entail (7), it is clear that for Descartes at least (1′) logically necessitates all of (2), (3), (6) and (7)” (Harrison 1992, 225).
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Bayle’s arguments that these conditions cannot be satisfied are too subtle to be assessed here.
- 14.
“An brutae animantes solo natura instinctus in fines suos ferantur” and “Quidnam sit brutorum animantius instinctus,” Commentariorum Collegii Conimbricesis Societatis Iesu, In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis Stagirita, prima pars, II, ix, quest. 3 et quest. 4 (Cologne 1602), col. 420–29 (Richards’ footnote).
- 15.
See, for example, Descartes’ letter to the Marquess of Newcastel (1646), Oeuvres de Descartes, edited by C. Adam and P. Tannery (13 vols; Paris, 1897–1913), IV, 573–75. Thomas Willis’s De anima brutorum quae hominis vitalis ac sensitive est (1672), in Thomas Willis Opera omnia, ed. G. Blasius (Amsterdam, 1862), and Antoine Dilly’s Traitt de l’ame et de la connoissance des btes (1676) rev. ed. (Amsterdam, 1691) developed and refined Descartes’ theory of the beast machine (Richards’ footnote).
- 16.
H. Reimarus, Allgemeine Betrachtunhen ber die Triebe der Thiere (1760), XCIII (3rd ed.; Hamburg, 1773), p. 160 (Richards’ footnote).
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Park, W. (2017). On Animal Cognition: Before and After the Beast-Machine Controversy. In: Abduction in Context. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48956-8_6
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