The DOI matches its Crossref record; 76 of the 76 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
On the lack of evidence that non-human animals possess anything remotely resembling a ‘theory of mind’
Open accessAbstract
After decades of effort by some of our brightest human and non-human minds, there is still little consensus on whether or not non-human animals understand anything about the unobservable mental states of other animals or even what it would mean for a non-verbal animal to understand the concept of a ‘mental state’. In the present paper, we confront four related and contentious questions head-on: (i) What exactly would it mean for a non-verbal organism to have an ‘understanding’ or a ‘representation’ of another animal's mental state? (ii) What should (and should not) count as compelling empirical evidence that a non-verbal cognitive agent has a system for understanding or forming representations about mental states in a functionally adaptive manner? (iii) Why have the kind of experimental protocols that are currently in vogue failed to produce compelling evidence that non-human animals possess anything even remotely resembling a theory of mind? (iv) What kind of experiments could, at least in principle, provide compelling evidence for such a system in a non-verbal organism?
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Cites
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?
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Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition
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Meta-Analysis of Theory-of-Mind Development: The Truth about False Belief
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The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior
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Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes
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The Mentality of Crows: Convergent Evolution of Intelligence in Corvids and Apes
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Cited by
The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge
Adolphs, R. (2009) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163514 · Cited by 1,827
Toward a second-person neuroscience
Schilbach, L., Timmermans, B., Reddy, V., Costall, A., Bente, G., Schlicht, T., & Vogeley, K. (2013) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x12000660 · Cited by 1,510
Do humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states
Apperly, I. A., & Butterfill, S. A. (2009) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/a0016923 · Cited by 1,261
Darwin's mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds
Penn, D. C., Holyoak, K. J., & Povinelli, D. J. (2008) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x08003543 · Cited by 1,174
Self-citationThe evolution of self-control.
MacLean, E. L., Hare, B., Nunn, C. L., Addessi, E., Amici, F., Anderson, R. C., Aureli, F., Baker, J. M., Bania, A. E., Barnard, A. M., et al. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1323533111 · Cited by 819
Metadata
- Authors
- Penn, D. C., & Povinelli, D. J.
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2007-01-30
- Volume
- 362
- Issue
- 1480
- Pages
- 731-744
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- OpenAlex
- W2157105107
- Cited by
- 629
- References
- 76
- FWCI
- 31.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Penn, D. C., & Povinelli, D. J. (2007). On the lack of evidence that non-human animals possess anything remotely resembling a ‘theory of mind’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.2023
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
