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).
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