Behavioural flexibility is often treated as the gold standard of evidence for more sophisticated or complex forms of animal cognition, such as planning, metacognition and mindreading. However, the evidential link between behavioural flexibility and complex cognition has not been explicitly or systematically defended. Such a defence is particularly pressing because observed flexible behaviours can frequently be explained by putatively simpler cognitive mechanisms. This leaves complex cognition hypotheses open to 'deflationary' challenges that are accorded greater evidential weight precisely because they offer putatively simpler explanations of equal explanatory power. This paper challenges the blanket preference for simpler explanations, and shows that once this preference is dispensed with, and the full spectrum of evidence-including evolutionary, ecological and phylogenetic data-is accorded its proper weight, an argument in support of the prevailing assumption that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognitive mechanisms may begin to take shape. An adaptive model of cognitive-behavioural evolution is proposed, according to which the existence of convergent trait-environment clusters in phylogenetically disparate lineages may serve as evidence for the same trait-environment clusters in other lineages. This, in turn, could permit inferences of cognitive complexity in cases of experimental underdetermination, thereby placing the common view that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognition on firmer grounds.

译文

行为灵活性通常被视为更复杂或复杂的动物认知形式 (例如计划,元认知和思维阅读) 的黄金证据标准。但是,行为灵活性与复杂认知之间的证据联系尚未得到明确或系统的辩护。这种防御特别紧迫,因为观察到的灵活行为通常可以用简单的认知机制来解释。这使复杂的认知假设对 “通缩” 挑战开放,而这些挑战恰恰是因为它们提供了对同等解释力的简单解释,因此被赋予了更大的证据权重。本文对笼统的偏好提出了更简单的解释,并表明,一旦取消了这种偏好,并且包括进化,生态和系统发育数据在内的所有证据都被赋予了适当的权重,支持行为灵活性可以作为复杂认知机制证据的普遍假设的论点可能开始形成。提出了一种认知行为进化的适应性模型,根据该模型,在系统发育上不同的谱系中存在收敛的性状环境簇可以作为其他谱系中相同性状环境簇的证据。反过来,这可以允许在实验确定不足的情况下推断认知的复杂性,从而提出了一种普遍的观点,即行为灵活性可以在更坚定的基础上作为复杂认知的证据。

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