Cognitive ethology is a branch of

ethology Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objecti ...

concerned with the influence of conscious awareness and intention on the behaviour of an animal.

Donald Griffin Donald Redfield Griffin (August 3, 1915 – November 7, 2003) was an American professor of zoology at various universities who conducted seminal research in animal behavior, animal navigation, acoustic orientation and sensory biophysics. In 1938, ...

, a

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, an ...

professor in the United States, set up the foundations for researches in the cognitive awareness of animals within their habitats. The fusion of cognitive science and classical

into cognitive ethology "emphasizes observing animals under more-or-less natural conditions, with the objective of understanding the evolution, adaptation (function), causation, and development of the species-specific behavioral repertoire" ( Niko Tinbergen 1963). According to Jamieson & Bekoff (1993), "Tinbergen's four questions about the evolution, adaptation, causation and development of behavior can be applied to the cognitive and mental abilities of animals." Allen & Bekoff (1997, chapter 5) attempt to show how cognitive ethology can take on the central questions of cognitive science, taking as their starting point the four questions described by Barbara Von Eckardt in her 1993 book ''What is Cognitive Science?'', generalizing the four questions and adding a fifth. Kingstone, Smilek & Eastwood (2008) suggested that cognitive ethology should include human behavior. They proposed that researchers should firstly study how people behave in their natural, real world environments and then move to the lab.

Anthropocentric Anthropocentrism (; ) is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity in the universe. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. ...

claims for the ways non-human animals interact in their social and non-social worlds are often used to influence decisions on how the non-human animals can or should be used by humans.

Relation to laboratory experimental psychology

Traditionally, cognitive ethologists have questioned research methods that isolate animals in unnatural surroundings and present them with a limited set of artificial stimuli, arguing that such techniques favor the study of artificial issues that are not relevant to an understanding of the natural behavior of animals. However, many modern researchers favor a judicious combination of field and laboratory methods.

Relation to ethics

Bekoff, M and Allen, C (1997) "identify three major groups of people (among some of whose members there are blurred distinctions) with different views on cognitive ethology, namely, slayers, skeptics, and proponents." The latter seemingly convergent with

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the s ...

thinking in seeing animal experience as worthy in itself.

Ethicist An ethicist is one whose judgment on ethics and ethical codes has come to be trusted by a specific community, and (importantly) is expressed in some way that makes it possible for others to mimic or approximate that judgment. Following the advice of ...

Peter Singer Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular ...

is an example of a "proponent" in this sense, as is biologist

E. O. Wilson Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...

who coined the term biophilia to describe the basis of a direct

moral cognition A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...

, that 'higher' animals would use to perceive moral implications in the environment directly.

Three views

According to Marc Bekoff, there are three different views towards whether a science of cognitive ethology is even possible. Slayers deny any possibility of success in cognitive ethology, proponents keep an open mind about animal cognition and the utility of cognitive ethological investigation, and skeptics stand somewhere in between.

References

Sources

Philosophy of Cognitive Ethology
Colin Allen, Texas A&M University
Cognitive ethology: slayers, skeptics and proponents
{{ethology zh-yue:認知動物行為學 Cognitive science Ethology

Ethology Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objecti ...

Relation to laboratory experimental psychology

Relation to ethics

Three views

See also

References

Sources