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1 results

  • Chapter 12 - Animal Cognition in Aristotle

  • Edited by Sophia M. Connell, Birkbeck College, University of London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Biology
    Published online:
    14 May 2021
    Print publication:
    27 May 2021, pp 195-210

  • Summary

    Aristotle wrote extensively about the character and behavior of non-human animals in his Historia Animalium. One aspect of character is cognitive abilities. The chapter sets out Aristotle’s views on the cognitive abilities of animals, evidenced also in other works such as the Metaphysics and De Anima. All animals perceive but many also have imagination, memory, and practical intelligence. For Aristotle nonhuman animals have a sort of practical intelligence suited to their particular ways of life. The considerable overlap in cognitive abilities between human and nonhuman animals allows Aristotle to establish a biological basis for many human traits. Many nonhuman animals not only manage to organize their lives and negotiate new challenges but also maintain relationships with each other over extended periods. Social relationships require complex communication and involve a very important type of intelligence which is perfected in the most political of animals, human beings. The chapter ends with an account of how human cognition differs from that which occurs in other animals.