Natural Design and the Future of Comparative Psychology

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Comparative psychology has an uncertain future. As an explanatory enterprise it is doomed because mental entities are not the sort of things that can in principle explain other things. As a descriptive enterprise, it may serve to identify and define the properties of behavior in animals that stimulate us to apply mental predicates to that behavior. Such a project is crucial, but it is unlikely to be seen as psychology for very long, because its explanatory concepts will have to be imported from other disciplines such as physiology or evolutionary theory

Publication Title

Journal of Comparative Psychology

Publication Date

1987

Volume

101

Issue

3

First Page

282

Last Page

286

ISSN

1939-2087

DOI

10.1037/0735-7036.101.3.282

Keywords

comparative psychology, natural design

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