Document type : scientific article published in Zilsel
Author : Chloé de Mondémé
Preview: Our proposition is based on an observation: that of the ubiquity of the notion of animal intentionality among contemporary scientists across disciplinary boundaries. The view that animals can be possessed of more or less complex mental states that are, to a certain extent, comparable to the cognitive skills observed in humans, is as much a driver in the behavioural sciences (social cognition, behavioural ecology) as it is in philosophy of mind, ethics or metaphysics - disciplines where animal intentionality is conceptualised in widely differing ways. From a very grudging attribution of emotional or representational states to animals, to a radically cognitivist version positing the existence of a theory of mind, the definitions of animal intentionality are as numerous as the empirical ways to test its existence.
