Neuroethology and the philosophy of cognitive science

Abstract

Neuroethology is a branch of biology that studies the neural basis of naturally occurring animal behavior. This science, particularly a recent program called computational neuroethology, has a similar structure to the interdisciplinary endeavor of cognitive science. I argue that it would be fruitful to conceive of cognitive science as the computational neuroethology of humans. However, there are important differences between the two sciences, including the fact that neuroethology is much more comparative in its perspective. As a biological science, evolution is central to neuroethology and its target animals are studied in the context of their evolutionary relatives. The central goal of this paper is to argue that cognitive science can and ought to be more comparative in its approach to cognitive phenomena in humans. I show how the domain of cognitive science can be divided up into four different classes of cognitive behavior--individuated by the relative uniqueness of the behavior. I then describe how comparative evidence can enrich our understanding in each of these different arenas.