Department of Philosophy, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 143, Room 0.12, 1012 GC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2020 Aug 10;42(3):37. doi: 10.1007/s40656-020-00332-z.
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.
在 18 世纪有关动物认知的争论中，我们至少可以区分出三种主要的理论立场：（i）布丰的机械论，（ii）雷莫的本能论，以及（iii）康狄拉克和勒鲁瓦的感觉论。在本文中，我从哲学的角度探讨了这场争论，并认为，为了充分理解布丰、雷莫、康狄拉克和勒鲁瓦为他们各自的理论提供的理由，我们必须特别注意这些自然主义者在为自己的立场辩护时所暗示的理论优点。这些理论优点在有关 18 世纪动物认知的文献中几乎没有受到关注，但在对动物行为的机械论、本能论和感觉论的辩护中却占有重要地位。通过对理论优点在 18 世纪有关动物认知的争论中所扮演的角色进行哲学研究，我们可以更深入地了解理论优点在 18 世纪科学中是如何被概念化的，以及它们是如何影响动物认知理论的辩护的。
