Morgan's Canon, meet Hume's Dictum: avoiding anthropofabulation in cross-species comparisons
Morgan's Canon, meet Hume's Dictum: avoiding anthropofabulation in cross-species comparisons
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DOI：
10.1007/s10539-013-9376-0
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发表时间：
2013-09-01
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
Buckner, Cameron
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Buckner, Cameron
我们应该如何确定心理特征的分布，如心理理论、情景记忆和元认知在整个动物王国中的分布？长期以来，研究人员一直担心拟人化偏见对这个比较项目的扭曲影响。一个据称是纠正这种偏见的方法被C.劳埃德·摩根在他著名的《卡农》中。然而，同样危险的是一种明显的偏见，这种偏见使我们对动物的心态产生了偏见：我们倾向于将认知能力的能力标准与夸大的典型人类表现联系起来。我把这种错误称为“虚构”，因为它把自我中心主义和对自己能力的虚构结合在一起。长期以来，拟人化一直扭曲着关于动物思维的争论，但这是一种几乎没有被讨论过的偏见，《圣经》也没有提供任何保护。幸运的是，有一个古老的纠正虚构的原则：很久以前由大卫休谟提出的原则，我称之为“休谟的格言”。在本文中，我认为休谟的《格言》在比较心理学方法论中应该与摩根的《经典》并列，并通过讨论非人类动物的心理理论之争来阐明我的观点。
How should we determine the distribution of psychological traits-such as Theory of Mind, episodic memory, and metacognition-throughout the Animal kingdom? Researchers have long worried about the distorting effects of anthropomorphic bias on this comparative project. A purported corrective against this bias was offered as a cornerstone of comparative psychology by C. Lloyd Morgan in his famous "Canon". Also dangerous, however, is a distinct bias that loads the deck against animal mentality: our tendency to tie the competence criteria for cognitive capacities to an exaggerated sense of typical human performance. I dub this error "anthropofabulation", since it combines anthropocentrism with confabulation about our own prowess. Anthropofabulation has long distorted the debate about animal minds, but it is a bias that has been little discussed and against which the Canon provides no protection. Luckily, there is a venerable corrective against anthropofabulation: a principle offered long ago by David Hume, which I call "Hume's Dictum". In this paper, I argue that Hume's Dictum deserves a privileged place next to Morgan's Canon in the methodology of comparative psychology, illustrating my point through a discussion of the debate over Theory of Mind in nonhuman animals.