Sanja Sreckovic (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany): Affective preconditions of cognition

A big part of the discussions on animal minds is focused predominantly on the distinction between association and cognition. This ‘Standard Practice’ involves many attempts to determine whether the results of empirical research are best explained by appeal to associative or cognitive mechanisms. The practice has already been criticized for being oversimplifed, relying on conceptual confusions, and leading to unproductive discussions (e.g., Allen, 2006; Papineau & Heyes, 2006; Buckner, 2011, 2017; Dacey, 2016, 2017). The debates within the Standard Practice typically do not involve consideration of affective experiences, except in the most basic version of positive and negative associations produced by conditioning. 

On the other hand, research on affective experiences of non-human animals has received less attention in the comparative literature than research on cognition, and it is situated mostly in the context of sentience (e.g., Browning & Birch, 2022; Crump et al., 2022) or on the issue of possible cognitive preconditions of emotions (Panksepp, 2004, 2005; Birch, forthcoming). 

My research is located at the intersection of these two lines of research, and addresses a specific aspect of both affect and cognition, which has not been discussed in the comparative literature. Instead of considering the cognitive preconditions of affective experiences, I shift the perspective and discuss the opposite – the affective preconditions of cognition. I argue that affective experiences have primacy over cognitive processes in the sense that their characteristic features enable them to act as a ‘bridge’ between the simpler associative and more complex cognitive processes. Some of the key characteristic features of affective experiences involve valence, differential degrees of intensity, and compositionality (to a particular degree). I support this view, first, by providing a representational and structural analysis of what I call ‘affective representations’, which reveals their compositional potential and shows in which way they enable flexible assessments of the environment. Secondly, I point out the support coming from recent neuroscientific and cognitive science research which suggests a novel conception of the affective system as a flexible learning system, capable of tracking relations in the environment and of guiding behaviors in a way that is strikingly similar to how rational procedures for decision making are commonly understood in philosophy (Railton, 2014; Quartz, 2007; Schwarz & Clore, 1983, 2007; Carver & Scheier, 1990; Pessoa, 2008; Zahn et al., 2009). 

Finally, I show how this analysis can be applied to two empirical case studies in comparative psychology. The first case study concerns the capability for making transitive inferences observed in social dominance relations in primates and birds, and also tested in experimental setting on many other species (Vasconcelos, 2008; Gazes & Lazareva, 2021). The second case study concerns the phenomenon of ‘emotional bookkeeping’, which refers to the observed ability of primates for long-term tracking of the exchange of benefits with other individuals in their social groups in the context of reciprocal altruism (Schino & Aureli, 2009). I argue that applying the concept of affective representations to these and similar cases helps us understand in what way affective experiences ground cognition and reasoning processes, rather than requiring them. This view also fits with the already proposed idea that associative and cognitive processes are not necessarily excluding each other, but rather that the former can implement the latter (Buckner, 2011, 2017).    

Allen, C., 2006. Transitive inference in animals: Reasoning or conditioned associations? In: Hurley, S., Nudds, M. (Eds.), Rational Animals? Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 175185.  

Browning, H., & Birch, J. (2022). Animal sentience. Philosophy Compass, 17(5), e12822. 

Buckner, C. (2011). Two approaches to the distinction between cognition and 'mere association'. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 24(4). 

Buckner, C. (2017). Understanding associative and cognitive explanations in comparative psychology. The Routledge handbook of philosophy of animal minds, 409-419. 

Carver C. S. and M. F. Scheier, “Origins and Functions of Positive and Negative Affect: A Control-Process View,” Psychological Review 97 1990: 19 – 35; 

Crump, Andrew; Browning, Heather; Schnell, Alex; Burn, Charlotte; and Birch, Jonathan (2022) Sentience in decapod crustaceans: A general framework and review of the evidence. Animal Sentience 32(1) 

Dacey, M. (2016). Rethinking associations in psychology. Synthese, 193(12), 3763-3786. 

Dacey, M. (2017). A new view of association and associative models. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds (pp. 419-426). Routledge. 

Gazes, R. P., & Lazareva, O. F. (2021). Does Cognition Differ Across Species, And How Do We Know? Lessons From Research in Transitive Inference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 47(3), 223–233. 

Panksepp, J. (2004). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Panksepp, J. (2005). Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans. Consciousness and Cognition, 14, 30–80. 

Papineau, D., & Heyes, C. (2006). Rational or Associative? Imitation in Japanese Quail. In S. Hurley, & M. Nudds (Eds.), Rational Animals? (pp. 187 - 196). 

Pessoa, L. “On the Relationship between Emotion and Cognition,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9 2008: 148 – 58;  

Quartz, S. R. “Reason, Emotion, and Decision-Making: Risk and Reward Computation with Feeling,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13 2007: 209 – 15. 

Railton, Peter (2014). The affective dog and its rational tale: intuition and attunement. Ethics 124 (4):813-859. 

Schino & Aureli (2009) Reciprocal Altruism in Primates: Partner Choice, Cognition, and Emotions. Advances in the Study of Behavior, Academic Press, Volume 39, pp. 45-69. 

Schwarz N. and G. L. Clore, “Mood as Information: Twenty Years Later,” Psychological Inquiry 14, 2007: 296 – 303;  

Schwarz N. and G. L. Clore, “Mood, Misattribution, and Judgments of Well-Being: Informative and Directive Functions of Affective States,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, 1983: 513 – 23;

Vasconcelos M. (2008). Transitive Inference in Non-human Animals: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis. Behavioural Processes, 78(3), 313–334. 

Zahn, R., J. Moll, M. Paiva, et al., “The Neural Basis of Human Social Values: Evidence from Functional MRI,” Cerebral Cortex 19, 2009: 276 – 83.