Tyler Delmore

I study philosophy of animal minds and philosophy of science at York University in Toronto, Canada.  

Much of my research pertains to the historical foundations of present-day cognitive science and animal minds science. 

My dissertation reconstructs the philosophical underpinnings of Edward Tolman, an empirical psychologist of the 'behaviorist age'.  His career is usually narrated as having culminated in a conversion to something like cognitive-representationalism (e.g., his theory of "cognitive maps"). This account gets Tolman demonstrably wrong. Tolman's work (including his "cognitive maps"), once properly reconstructed, proves to be entirely behavioristic. The interpretive problem lies in our underestimation of behaviorism's breadth, depth, and - when dissociated from caricature - intellectual merit. 

I'm also interested in historical efforts at establishing a science of consciousness in nonhuman animals. This history is itself badly misunderstand due to assumptions about comparative psychology during 'the behaviorist age'. See Research.

My research is funded by a Canadian Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral (CGS-D) award from SSHRC. 

I remain involved in empirical research and scientific communities. On behalf of Prof. Kristin Andrews, I have - since 2021 - run the GTA Animal Cognition group. In terms of experimental work, I am involved in research on tool-use and concept learning in Goffin's cockatoos.