Slide 19 of 21
Notes:
Investigating the minds of animals forces us to face the problem of what it means to have a mind. The phenomenological issue is exemplified by Nagel's question of what it is like to be a bat. Because we are so familiar with our own minds, we know quite well what it is like be ourselves, but have little idea of what it is like to be another individual. Things do not just happen to us, rather we experience them. The mind is what does the experiencing. The phenomenological definition of mind argues that to have a mind is to have the experience of self-conscious existence, to know what it is like have an existence. This kind of definition, as Nagel pointed out, is extremely problematic when applied to animals. We have no principled way to judge whether other organisms merely simulate individuals with minds or whether they too have a mind just like our own.
Most investigators of animal cognition have focused instead on the functional characteristics of mind. On this approach, an animal's mind is the set of cognitive structures, processes, representations and skills that allow it to process, represent, store, and manipulate information. The question is not whether an animal has a mind, but rather what kind of mind it has. How does it obtain, store, and use information to guide its behavior? What computational processes constitute its information processing capacities?
Because of the peculiar sensory capabilities of dolphins, the problems of mind are particularly challenging, and thus, revealing.
