Animal Cognition: Theory and Evidence Review of Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of

Species of Mind seeks primarily to establish the credentials of cognitive ethology as an exciting and above all respectable branch of scientific inquiry. Difficulties in achieving the aims of cognitive ethology are not downplayed, but it is argued that they can be overcome sufficiently to sustain an empirical research program. An important subgoal is the promotion of an interdisciplinary approach to the required research. If cognitive ethology were a more mature discipline, a book with the above goals would hardly be necessary. It is partly because so many of its questions are unsettled that cognitive ethology is exposed to doubts and criticisms. One way of dealing with this situation would be to propound a single approach, method, and set of established results as a model for cognitive ethology, and argue that if the discipline is developed in the recommended way, it is respectable science. Allen and Bekoff reject this path and go out of their way to keep questions open. This way of proceeding often requires them to forego simple claims about actual advances in favor of complex, and somewhat weaker, claims that defend the empirical character or likely future productivity of various approaches to cognitive ethology. This circumspection is on the whole commendable