The University of Edinburgh. College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
In this thesis, I shall explore the theoretical and empirical expositions regarding the
causal mechanisms of cognitive growth. I shall do this in order to determine if
biological epistemic theories of cognitive systems can be justified.
It will be necessary in this thesis for me to adopt a multidisciplinary stance from
Philosophy and Psychology. It will try to investigate from these two perspectives what
it means to be a cognitive creature. However, I shall argue, if taken singularly, each
standpoint fails to provide an adequate account of cognition that is necessarily based
on adaptive, evolutionary constructs.
During this thesis I will primarily focus on the major arguments in Philosophy that
show a tight coupling between language, cognition and rationality. More specifically I
will examine in detail Donald Davidson’s holistic account of what it is to be a rational,
cognitive creature. I will show in the thesis, through comparative experimental
evidence, that the causal mechanisms of cognitive growth, and thus thought may not
be language. Consequently, Philosophical arguments that are based on tight
relationships of thought and language will not be able to deliver a true account of
cognition. I will demonstrate that Davidson’s philosophy has suffered from not being
able to ground his philosophical perspectives on the relationship of language,
cognition and rationality within an empirical programme and consequently it makes
fundamental errors. Davidson’s account does not take on board the recent (and not so
recent) empirical based work on primates which show the possible mechanisms of
cognitive growth, which are independent of language.
Similarly, I will also show that Psychology, which does provide us with the means to
deliver an empirical account of cognition, due to its history based on Behaviourism,
does not have the right causal mechanisms nor language to talk about the nature of
complex cognition. I will show how Associationistic Psychology mischaracterises
what it is to be cognitive and consequently, like philosophy, cannot deliver an accurate
ontology of cognition.
I intend in this thesis to provide a bridge between the two schools by adopting a
comparative psychological approach. By using this comparative perspective, a more
accurate theory of cognition may be possible and one that is not contaminated by
language or any other cultural symbolic systems. I aim by the end of the thesis to be in
a position which will hopefully allow modification of Davidson’s condition on
possessing beliefs, a creature must have beliefs about beliefs. This modification will be
based on an evolutionary account of what may or may not eventually turn out to be the
precursors of higher cognitive states