[CCoE Notice] ECE Speaker Series Presents: Philosophical Issues in Comparative Cognition Research

[Grayson, Audrey A]

CENTER FOR NEURO-ENGINEERING & COGNITIVE SCIENCE (CNECS) & BIOLOGY OF BEHAVIOR INSTITUTE (BoBI) PRESENTS…

Philosophical Issues in Comparative Cognition Research
Cameron Buckner, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, UH
Friday, February 13, 4:00 p.m.
Location: CBB Room 106

Many prominent scientists--Hawking, Dawkins, deGrasse Tyson, Kandel--have begun to publicly wonder whether
philosophy still has anything useful to contribute to our knowledge of the natural world. These critics often
concede that some philosophers are still helpful, but these exceptional individuals are so engaged with empirical
work that they are basically scientists themselves. In this talk, I will provide a beginner’s overview of several
philosophical problems that arise from within comparative cognition research yet cannot be solved merely by the
application of existing empirical methods. I will focus especially on a cluster of related issues: the relationships
between different and apparently inconsistent models of behavior (especially cognitive and associative models),
appeals to parsimony in arbitrating empirical disputes, the role of representational attributions in cognitive
theorizing, and how to decide when an empirical category (e.g. ‘concept’, ‘cognition’, ‘Theory of Mind’) is
a legitimate target for empirical debate. I will illustrate these issues primarily through a case study of the
interdisciplinary debate over whether any nonhuman animals possess a Theory of Mind. My conclusion will be be
the contrapositive of the skeptical conclusion about philosophy mentioned above: that the best scientists are also
philosophers, and so our thinking about disciplinary boundaries needs to become considerably more subtle if we
are to continue making empirical progress on some of our most difficult questions about the natural world.

Speaker Biosketch
Cameron Buckner began his academic career in computer science--specifically, in logic-based approaches to
artificial intelligence. This research inspired an interest into the (usually messier) ways that humans and animals
actually solve problems, which led him to obtain a PhD in Philosophy at Indiana University in 2011. He is now an
Assistant Professor In Philosophy at University of Houston, specializing in philosophical issues that arise in the
study of animal cognition.

For additional information, please contact Bhavin Sheth at brsheth at uh.edu.

Access this flyer at: http://www.ece.uh.edu/sites/www.ece/files/speakers/2015/buckner.pdf

For more information on the ECE Speaker Series, please visit http://www.ece.uh.edu/research/speaker-series
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