Martin Niederl (University of Vienna, Austria): Why did the chicken really cross the road? On reasons and guidance in non-human animals

The capacity to act for reasons is typically held to be beyond the ken of non-human animals (Davidson 1980; Alvarez 2010; Hyman 2015). They may act upon their environment, the thought goes, but certainly not for reasons — this requires thought structures too complex for even the most sophisticated of our fellow creatures. This is, in effect, how Maria Alvarez (2022) has recently responded to Hanjo Glock’s (2019) suggestion that animals can act for reasons. 

In this paper, I aim to make progress on the idea that certain non-human animals are capable of acting for (motivating) reasons. For this end, I first explicate the functional profile of motivating reasons implicit in the current literature. Based upon this, I then argue that according to this very profile, acting for reasons is actually less demanding than presumed. One need not deflate the notion of acting for a reason to include certain non-human animals — the notion has always been minimal enough to plausibly befit them. 

§1 As I show, two conditions are held to define acting for a motivating reason (see Dancy 2000; Alvarez 2010; Singh 2019; Schlicht & Starzak 2023): 

[MR] p is among A’s motivating reasons for φing iff 

[Favor] … p appears to A to favor φing, and 

[Light]  … A φs in the light of p. 

Non-human animals are typically thought to be neither capable of appreciating favoring relations, nor of being guided by reasons (Alvarez 2010; Hyman 2015; Alvarez 2022). Favoring relations involve facts. As such, appreciating favoring relations entails one’s capacity to appreciate facts. Since facts are propositionally structured, however, most animals will not be able to live up to this demand (Alvarez 2022). Moreover, acting ‘in the light of’ a reason means for one’s action to be guided by that reason (Hyman 2015), something that also seems too demanding for animals. 

§2 I argue that satisfying [Favor] is less demanding than is often assumed. For one, it is conceptually possible to model reasons as something that is coarser grained than propositions: states of affairs (Dancy 2000; 2018). This substantially weakens the claim that one’s thought about 1 reasons must be propositionally structured. For another, there is positive reason for believing that certain animals are capable of responding to favoring relations. Melis and Monsó (2023), for instance, have recently argued that some animals respond to complex epistemic defeaters. If animals can respond to epistemic reasons in this sophisticated way, this provides at least prima facie grounds for thinking they can similarly respond to practical reasons. 

§3 Similarly, I argue that satisfying [Light] is not as demanding as it initially appears. As I show, the only explicit analyses of [Light] essentially reduce it to the following claim: to φ in the light of a reason means that this reason can explain their action as their reason (Hyman 2015; Locke 2015). Building upon §2, I thus argue that insofar as animals can act upon favoring relations, these relations can explain their actions, thereby satisfying [Light]. 

Alvarez, Maria. 2010. Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

—. 2022. "Intelligence and reasons in animals." In Wittgenstein and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Hans-Johann Glock, edited by Christoph Pfisterer, Nicole Rathgeb and Eva Schmidt, 185-203. New York, NY: Routledge. 

Andrews, Kristin. 2020. The Animal Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal Cognition. Second ed. London: Routledge. 

Dancy, Jonathan. 2000. Practical Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

—. 2018. Practical Shape: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Davidson, Donald. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Glock, Hans-Johann. 2019. "Agency, Intelligence and Reasons in Animals." Philosophy 94 (4): 645-671. 

Hyman, John. 2015. Action, Knowledge, and Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Korsgaard, Christine M. 2018. Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Locke, Dustin. 2015. "Knowledge, Explanation, and Motivating Reasons." American Philosophical Quarterly 52: 215-232. 

Singh, Keshav. 2019. "Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2): 409-430. 

Starzak, Tobias, and Tobias Schlicht. 2023. "Can affordances be reasons?" Philosophical Psychology: 1–27. 

Steward, Helen. 2012. A Metaphysics for Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.