Abstract

Current philosophical orthodoxy has it that the human mind is set apart from the minds of other animals by the kinds of propositional attitudes and/or conscious states that human beings are able to entertain. In short, the cognitive uniqueness of the human being is thought to consist in the types of things in the world that humans are able to form beliefs about or of which humans are aware. Based upon an analysis of the explanatory aims and theoretical methods of cognitive ethology as well as an examination of the results of that science to date, I offer an alternative recommendation about the uniqueness of the human mind. I argue that philosophers should frame comparative questions about different kinds of animal minds in terms of the mechanisms by which animals and humans navigate the world. More specifically, I contend that philosophers should compare and contrast the means by which animals and humans learn in order to gain a foothold on what sets humans apart from other animals. So, on my view, the uniqueness of the human mind is to be found in the means by which humans learn to recognize things in the world as opposed to the kinds of things in the world that humans are able to recognize.