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Agency, Intelligence and Reasons in Animals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2019

Hans-Johann Glock
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Abstract

What kind of activity are non-human animals capable of? A venerable tradition insists that lack of language confines them to ‘mere behaviour’. This article engages with this ‘lingualism’ by developing a positive, bottom-up case for the possibility of animal agency. Higher animals cannot just act, they can act intelligently, rationally, intentionally and for reasons. In developing this case I draw on the interplay of behaviour, cognition and conation, the unduly neglected notion of intelligence and its connection to rationality, the need to recognize that reasons are objective conditions, and the difference between the ability to act for reasons and the capacity to reflect on reasons.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 94 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 645 - 671
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2019 

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43 For comments and assistance I am grateful to John Hyman, Basil Müller, Eva Schmidt and Emanuel Viebahn, as well as to audiences at Amsterdam, Cambridge, Erfurt, Erlangen, Hagen, Reading, Stuttgart, Toledo and Zurich.