Brian Keeley
Brian L. Keeley (2000). “Neuroethology and the philosophy of cognitive science,” Philosophy of Science, 67 (Proceedings), S404-S417. (Part of a symposium on “Studies in the Interaction of Psychology and Neuroscience” with Gary Hatfield and William Hirstein.)
Publication year: 2000

Neuroethology is a branch ofbiology that studies the neural basis ofnaturally occurring animal behavior. This science, particularly a recent program called computational neu- roethology, 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 per- spective. Neuroethology is a biological science and as such, evolution is a central notion. Its target organisms are studied in the context of their evolutionary history. The central goal of this paper is to argue that cognitive science can and ought to be more compar- ative in its approach to cognitive phenomena in humans. I show how the domain of cognitive phenomena can be divided up into four different classes, individuated by the relative phylogenetic uniqueness of the behavior. I then describe how comparative evi- dence can enrich our understanding in each of these different arenas.