Seven Challenges for the Science of Animal Minds

Abstract The scientific study of animal minds is difficult. This book examines the most significant reasons this is so: seven challenges for the science to overcome. Researchers are aware of these challenges, but few take any of them head-on, and none address them collectively as this book does. Despite this focus on challenges, the book’s orientation is optimistic; these are challenges for the science, not challenges to the science. Researchers have made substantial progress as things are. But taking the challenges head-on can help build an even stronger, more vibrant science. The seven challenges are: 1) underdetermination of theory by data, 2) anthropomorphic bias, 3) modeling cognitive processes, 4) integrating across disciplines, 5) ecological validity, 6) small sample sizes, and 7) measuring consciousness. For each, the book suggests rethinking the challenge and reorienting our attempts to address it. Each of the main chapters addresses one challenge and includes an empirical case study, from social reasoning in chimpanzees to consciousness in octopuses. Along the way, a big-picture framework emerges for drawing conclusions about animal minds from experimental evidence. In this framework, the role of any individual piece of the science is limited—any individual experiment, model, claim, or argument. We need to holistically consider all the evidence we can get.