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Book
Book
"Seven challenges for the science of animal minds"
Oxford University Press. Released online January 2025, print February 2025.
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 as this book does. Despite this focus on challenges, the book’s orientation is optimistic; 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) 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. Each of the main chapters addresses one challenge and includes an empirical case study, from social reasoning in chimpanzees to consciousness in octopuses. Along the way, a big-picture framework emerges for drawing conclusions about animal minds from experimental evidence. In this framework, the role of any individual piece of the science is limited—any individual experiment, model, claim, or argument. We need to holistically consider all the evidence we can get.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Peer-Reviewed Publications
"Implicit measures of anthropomorphism: Affective priming and recognition of apparent animal emotions" forthcoming in Frontiers in Psychology. Dacey & Coane
Abstract: It has long been recognized that humans tend to anthropomorphize. That is, we naturally and effortlessly interpret the behaviors of nonhuman agents in the same way we interpret human behaviors. This tendency has only recently become a subject of empirical research. Most of this work uses explicit measures. Participants are asked whether they attribute some human-like trait to a nonhuman agent on some scale. These measures, however, have two limitations.First, they do not capture automatic components of anthropomorphism. Second, they generally only track one anthropomorphic result: the attribution (or non-attribution) of a particular trait.However, anthropomorphism can affect how we interpret animal behavior in other ways as well. For example, the grin of a nonhuman primate often looks to us like a smile, but it actually signals a state more like fear or anxiety. In the present work, we tested for implicit components of anthropomorphism based on an affective priming paradigm. Previous work suggests that priming with human faces displaying emotional expressions facilitated categorization of words into congruent emotion categories. In Experiments 1-3, we primed participants with images of nonhuman animals that appear to express happy or sad emotions, and asked participants to categorize words as positive or negative. Experiment 4 used human faces as control. Overall, we found consistent priming congruency effects in accuracy but not response time. These appeared to be more robust in older adults. They also appear to emerge with more processing time, and the pattern was the same with human as with primate faces. This demonstrates a role for automatic processes of emotion recognition in anthropomorphism. It also provides a potential measure for further exploration of implicit anthropomorphism.
"Evidence in Default: Rejecting Default Models of Animal Minds" (2023) The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 74, 2: 291-312
Abstract: Comparative psychology experiments typically test a null statistical hypothesis against an alternative. Coupled with Morgan’s Canon, this is often taken to imply that the model positing the simpler psychological capacity should be treated as a ‘default’ that must be ruled out before any other model can be accepted. It has been objected that this practice neglects evidence. I argue that the problem is deeper, including the way it structures the evaluation of evidence that is considered; it frames model choice around the acceptance or rejection of a default. I oppose this default framing in all its forms and develop an evidentialist alternative. Default framing fails to respect the difference between experimental statistical hypotheses and substantive hypotheses such as models. It is not actually supported by the use of null hypothesis significance testing (which I retain), it distorts the weighting of evidence, and it systematically biases practice.
"The Shared Project, but Divergent Views, of the Empiricist Associationists" Forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology.
Abstract: Despite its long period of dominance, the details of associationism as developed by the British Empiricists in the 18th and 19th centuries are often ignored or forgotten today. Perhaps as a result, modern understandings of Empiricist associationism are often oversimplified. In fact, there is no single core view that can be viewed as definitional, or even weaker, as characteristic, of the tradition. The actual views of associationists in this tradition are much more diverse than any such view would allow, even on fundamental aspects of the concept of association. This paper presents some of the most striking theoretical diversity and most significant discussions within the Empiricist associationist tradition. Recognizing this diversity, Empiricist associationism is best viewed as a project with shared questions and methods rather than a shared substantive theory of mind. This discussion can inform our understanding of the historical tradition, and also inform our current use of association and associationism. The concept of association is more flexible than it is often treated, and even its basic nature and function remain up for debate.
"Association and Mechanisms of Priming" (2019) Journal of Cognitive Science. 20, 3: 281-321.
Abstract: In psychology, increasing interest in priming has brought with it a revival of associationist views. Association seems a natural explanation for priming: simple associative links carry subcritical levels of activation from representations of the prime stimulus to representations of the target stimulus. This then facilitates use of the representation of the target. I argue that the processes responsible for priming are not associative; they are more complex. Even so, associative models do get something right about how these processes behave. As a result, I argue, we should reconsider how we interpret associative models, taking them to identify regularities in the sequence of representational states in any kind of process, rather than as denoting a particular kind of process.
"Simplicity and the Meaning of Mental Association." (2019) Erkenntnis, 84 (6): 1207-1228.
Abstract: Some thoughts just come to mind together. This is usually thought to happen because they are connected by associations, which the mind follows. Such an explanation assumes that there is a particular kind of simple psychological process responsible. This view has encountered criticism recently. In response, this paper aims to characterize a general understanding of associative simplicity, which might support the distinction between associative processing and alternatives. I argue that there are two kinds of simplicity that are treated as characteristic of association, and as a result three possible versions of associative processing. This provides a framework that informs our understanding of association as a current and historical concept, including how various specific versions in different parts of psychology relate to one another. This framework can also guide debates over normative evaluations of actions produced by processes thought to be associative.
"The Paper Topic Machine: Creativity, Credit, and the Unconscious." (2018) Analysis, 78, 4: 614–622.
Abstract: It is commonly thought that unconscious processes cannot produce actions deserving praise or blame. I present a thought experiment designed to generate a contradicting intuition: at least in this case, we do give credit for the product of an unconscious process. The target is creativity. Many instances of creative thought begin with a step that unconsciously generates a new idea by combining existing ideas. The resulting ideas are selected and developed by later processing. This first step could be replaced with a simple machine that randomly pairs concepts. Now, imagine a philosopher, Liberty, who gets all of his paper ideas from this machine. Compare him to another philosopher, Libertad, who comes up with all the same papers using her own mind. If you share the intuition that Liberty’s work deserves less credit for creativity, you are giving credit for the product of an unconscious process.
I made a mock-up of the paper topic machine
"Anthropomorphism as Cognitive Bias." (2017) Philosophy of Science, 84, no. 4: 1152-1164.
Abstract: Philosophers and psychologists have long worried that a human tendency to anthropomorphize leads us to err in our understanding of nonhuman minds. This tendency, which I call intuitive anthropomorphism, is a heuristic used by our unconscious folk psychology to understand the behavior of nonhuman animals. I argue that the dominant understanding of intuitive anthropomorphism underestimates its complexity. It does often lead us to err, but not always. And the errors it produces are not all overestimations of nonhuman intelligence. If we want to understand and control intuitive anthropomorphism, we must treat is as a cognitive bias, and look to the empirical evidence. The literature on controlling implicit social biases is particularly helpful. That literature suggests that the most common control for intuitive anthropomorphism, Morgan’s Canon, should be rejected, while others are incomplete. It also suggests new approaches.
"The Varieties of Parsimony in Psychology." (2016), Mind & Language, 31: 414–437.
Abstract: Philosophers and psychologists make many different, seemingly incompatible parsimony claims in support of competing models of cognition in nonhuman animals. This variety of parsimony claims is problematic. Firstly, it is difficult to justify each specific variety. This problem is especially salient for Morgan’s Canon, perhaps the most important variety of parsimony claimed. Secondly, there is no systematic way of adjudicating between particular claims when they conflict. I argue for a view of parsimony in comparative psychology that solves these problems, based on Sober’s (1994) view that parsimony claims are claims that one model is more plausible given background theory.
"Rethinking Associations in Psychology" (2016). Synthese. 1-24
Abstract: I challenge the dominant understanding of what it means to say two thoughts are associated. The two views that dominate the current literature treat association as a kind of mechanism that drives sequences of thought (often implicitly treating them so). The first, which I call reductive associationism, treats association as a kind of neural mechanism. The second treats association as a feature of the kind of psychological mechanism associative processing. Both of these views are inadequate. I argue that association should instead be seen as a highly abstract filler term, standing in for causal relations between representational states in a system. Associations, so viewed, could be implemented by many different mechanisms. I outline the role that this view gives associative models as part of a top-down characterization of psychological processes of any kind and of any complexity.
"Associationism without associative links: Thomas Brown and the Associationist Project" (2015). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 54, pp. 31-40.
Abstract: There are two roles that association played in 18th–19th century associationism. The first dominates modern understanding of the history of the concept: association is a causal link posited to explain why ideas come in the sequence they do. The second has been ignored: association is merely regularity in the trains of thought, and the target of explanation. The view of association as regularity arose in several forms throughout the tradition, but Thomas Brown (1778–1820) makes the distinction explicit. He argues that there is no associative link, and association is mere sequence. I trace this view of association through the tradition, and consider its implications: Brown's views, in particular, motivate a rethinking of the associationist tradition in psychology. Associationism was a project united by a shared explanandum phenomenon, rather than a theory united by a shared theoretical posit.
Invited Publications
Invited Publications
“Separate substantive from statistical hypotheses and treat them differently.” (2022) Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E9.
Commentary on Yarkoni, T. “The Generalizability Crisis.” I suggest addressing the problems Yarkoni identifies by separating substantive from statistical hypotheses, and treating them differently. A statistical test of experimental data only bears directly on statistical hypotheses. Evaluation of related substantive hypotheses requires an additional, qualitative inference to the best explanation. Statistical inference cannot do all of the work of theory choice.
"Associationism in the Philosophy of Mind." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. First published August 2020.
A survey of historical views on the nature and role of association from John Locke to the present.
"Parsimony." (2018) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, Zeigler-Hill, Virgil, Shackelford, Todd K. (Eds.).
A review of different interpretations and justifications of parsimony, with an emphasis on how they might apply in personality psychology.
"A New View of Association and Associative Models." (2017) in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds. K. Andrews & J. Beck (Eds.).
In this chapter, I describe my view of association, discussing its historical precursors and its benefits over existing views.
"Reference" (2016) in A Companion to Experimental Philosophy. J. Sytsma & W. Buckwalter (Eds.). Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. Dacey & Mallon
An opinionated review of experimental philosophical work on reference, including work on the reference of both names of individuals and of kinds.
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