The Controversy over What Animals Know about Other Minds

FAIN: FT-57960-10

Robert William Lurz
CUNY Research Foundation, Brooklyn College (Brooklyn, NY 11210-2850)

The project is a monograph on the debate in philosophy over mental-state attribution (mindreading) in animals. The question of animal mindreading is especially pressing and significant at the moment not only for its potential to advance our understanding of animal minds but for its bearing on issues concerning our moral attitudes and treatment of animals, as well as for what it says about views regarding human uniqueness and the evolutionary origin and function of mindreading in humans. The importance of the monograph is its innovative new approach to answering the question of animal mindreading. The book argues for a radically new conceptualization of mental-state attribution in animals, in both cognitive and evolutionary terms, that is suitable for animals and presents an ingenious new experimental methodology for testing mental-state attribution in animals, one that promises to advance scientific research into animal mindreading.