Theoretical virtues in eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition
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Theoretical virtues in eighteenth‑century debates on animal cognition Hein van den Berg1
Received: 2 August 2019 / Accepted: 30 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Within eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition we can distinguish at least three main theoretical positions: (i) Buffon’s mechanism, (ii) Reimarus’ theory of instincts, and (iii) the sensationalism of Condillac and Leroy. In this paper, I adopt a philosophical perspective on this debate and argue that in order to fully understand the justification Buffon, Reimarus, Condillac, and Leroy gave for their respective theories, we must pay special attention to the theoretical virtues these naturalists alluded to while justifying their position. These theoretical virtues have received little to no attention in the literature on eighteenth-century animal cognition, but figure prominently in the justification of the mechanist, instinctive, and sensationalist theories of animal behavior. Through my philosophical study of the role of theoretical virtues in eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition, we obtain a deeper understanding of how theoretical virtues were conceptualized in eighteenth-century science and how they influenced the justification of theories of animal cognition. Keywords Animal cognition · Theoretical virtues · Mechanism · Buffon · Reimarus · Condillac · Leroy
1 Introduction As Robert Richards has shown, there are at least three main theoretical positions within eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition: (i) Buffon’s mechanism, which provides mechanical explanations of animal behavior, (ii) Reimarus’ theory * Hein van den Berg [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 143, Room 0.12, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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of instincts, which posits innate instincts to explain animal behavior, and (iii) the sensationalism of Condillac and Leroy, a mentalist position which attributes reason or intelligence to animals (Richards 1979, 1987). There are many possible historical explanations for why these different positions emerged: we can point to different sociological reasons, differences in the intellectual context within which Buffon, Reimarus, and Condillac and Leroy operated, such as the difference between the French and German Enlightenment, and possibly many other historical factors. In this paper, I will not focus on sociological and historical factors influencing eighteenth-century naturalists but adopt a strong philosophical perspective on the eighteenth-century debate on animal cognition. I will argue that in order to fully understand the justification Buffon, Reimarus, Condillac, and Leroy gave for their respective positions, we must pay attention to the theoretical virtues these naturalists alluded to while justifying their position. These theoretical virtues have received little to no attention in the literature on eighteenth-century animal cognition, but figu
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