[FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

That's extraordinarily kind of you, Glen.  I would look forward to any responses you had.  For most academic writers ... except the Dennetts and the Pinkers and the Dawkinses ... writing is like dropping gold pieces down an infinitely deep wishing well.  You never even hear them hit the bottom, let alone get your wishes.  

I share your misgivings about Harnad.  To his credit, Harnad published a lot of my commentaries  while disagreeing vociferously with my perspective, whenever I approached him directly.  He is a dyed in the wool Cartesian who has never doubted for a minute that all experience begins with knowledge of one's own mind.  There are mountains of evidence to suggest that, on the contrary, experience of one's own mind is derived from experience of the world, and is as much, or more, of an inference that our inference of the minds of others.  So the entire project laid out in his abstract is, to me, patently wrong-headed.  

Thanks, again, Glen.

Nick 



Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2018 1:29 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

I'm not sure I've read all 3.  I will, though.  I *tried* to read this:

  Animal Sentience: The other-minds problem
  https://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss1/1/

And I've read some of Harnad's other work and came away impressed.  But his characterization of the "hard problem" seems fundamentally *off* to me.  But who knows.  He's smarter than I am.  In any case, I found this response interesting:

  Nonhuman mind-reading ability
  https://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss1/2/


On 09/13/2018 06:34 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Glen has already read and commented on this stuff, a kindness for 
> which I am eternally grateful  If you are interested in this topic, I would love to hear from more of you.


--
☣ uǝlƃ

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