TY - JOUR
T1 - Do honeybees have concepts?
AU - Dreyse, Bernardo Aguilera
PY - 2011/5
Y1 - 2011/5
N2 - Can animals think? In this paper I address the proposal that many animals, including insects such as honeybees, have genuine thoughts. I consider one prominent version of this view (Carruthers 2004; 2006) that claims that honeybees can represent and process information about their environments in a way that satisfies the main hallmarks of human conceptual thought. I shall argue, however, that this view fails to provide convincing grounds for accepting that animals possess concepts. More precisely, I suggest that two important aspects of conceptual thought, viz., concept individuation and the generality constraint, are not satisfied.
AB - Can animals think? In this paper I address the proposal that many animals, including insects such as honeybees, have genuine thoughts. I consider one prominent version of this view (Carruthers 2004; 2006) that claims that honeybees can represent and process information about their environments in a way that satisfies the main hallmarks of human conceptual thought. I shall argue, however, that this view fails to provide convincing grounds for accepting that animals possess concepts. More precisely, I suggest that two important aspects of conceptual thought, viz., concept individuation and the generality constraint, are not satisfied.
KW - Animal cognition
KW - Concept individuation
KW - Concepts
KW - Generality constraint
KW - Modularity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84861495488&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2478/disp-2011-0002
DO - 10.2478/disp-2011-0002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84861495488
SN - 0873-626X
VL - 4
SP - 107
EP - 125
JO - Disputatio
JF - Disputatio
IS - 30
ER -