The social life of animals poses specific adaptive challenges that may be cognitively different to challenges from ecological adaptations to their physical environment. Social cognitive adaptations for dealing with other agents are evolutionarily remarkable in that they automatically become an adaptive challenge that may trigger counter- or co-adaptations. This chapter discusses three main problems in social cognition: first, the issue of mentalism or theory of mind, or whether social cognitive adaptations in animals are based on mentalistic attribution skills that may involve representing the intentions and knowledge of others; second, the cognitive underpinnings of animal communication, with a focus on referential and intentional communication; and third, the problem of how animals know and represent the social relations structuring their groups. There is widespread debate about how the social knowledge and reasoning demonstrated in animal social behavior are exactly implemented. The traditional debate in comparative psychology between reductionist behavioristic explanations and complex cognitive explanations has become especially pronounced in social cognition. A widespread proposal is that the type of knowledge demonstrated by animals is ‘implicit,’ distinct both from the verbally expressible knowledge evolved by humans, and from low-level, reflex-like associative behaviours and habits. However, the key notion of implicit knowledge remains elusive and ill-defined.

The ability to engage in some form of communication is essential for any social species. Communication generally relies on species-specific adaptations that provide animals with a cognitive tool to pass on messages from one conspecific to the other. This means that communication between members of different species is relatively rare and potentially requires qualitatively different cognitive abilities. This form of communication is not only challenging due to the fact that different species may rely on distinct sets of codes to convey messages but also because the primary modality used for this purpose may be different. Dogs represent a special case in the animal kingdom as they have been uniquely adapted to be receptive to the communicative signals of a species relatively distant in terms of their genome: humans. In this chapter, we will first focus on those characteristics of canids’ intraspecific communication that are shared between the dog and their phylogenetically closest relative, the wolf. Similarities in these forms of communication are likely the result of the common ancestry of the two species. Next, we turn to describing those attributes of canine communication that selectively pertain to how dogs communicate with their conspecifics. Finally, we discuss the ubiquitous nature of heterospecific communication between dogs and humans.

By responding to information gained through observing or interacting with other individuals, fish can learn about important aspects of their environment, including where to forage, how to recognize and avoid predators, and who to mate with. Social learning processes are often closely intertwined with the social environment; whether individuals engage in social learning, who they learn from, and what they learn frequently depend on complex, nonrandom patterns of social interaction. Social network analysis provides a sophisticated toolset for quantifying such elements of social structure. In this chapter, we discuss how integrating social network approaches with investigations into social learning have provided novel and important insights regarding the ways in which fish acquire and use social information in realistic social contexts.

This chapter is centered upon the section of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” that Kant calls the “key” to the critique of taste and in which he elaborates the judgment of taste in terms that are striking yet scant, familiar yet elusive: a “state of mind” of “free play” of the cognitive powers, in which they are in “harmony” or “attunement” and are mutually “animated,” and in which their “subjective relation” corresponds to a “subjective condition” of cognition. I propose that a key to Kant’s thought is to be found in the notion of “universal communicability,” which this section introduces. The sense of “communication” on which it depends is, I argue, to be understood robustly, as having to do with the imparting of something to someone. I then argue that the judgment of taste turns on an experience of wanting to render communicable, or explore and articulate, one’s encounter with the extra-factual aesthetic character of the object. My interpretation reorients the role and significance of pleasure, and of feeling more generally, in the judgment of taste. The pleasure of the judgment of taste is in the object and in one’s state of mind, which the object is felt to awaken.

This chapter addresses the legitimation of the judgment of taste, the task of its deduction. Kant claims that judgments of taste may be argued about but not disputed. Is there room for a mode of supporting one’s judgment that is distinct from proof (on the one side) and from persuasion (on the other)? This chapter shows that, on Kant’s view, there is, and that aesthetic arguing occupies it. Aesthetic arguing is undertaken with the aim, or in the hope, of opening the way for the other person’s animation: helping the object bring the other person to life, or helping bring her to life for it. The free play of the cognitive faculties expresses or constitutes a caring for the object. To care for or about something or someone is to commit to ongoing engagement with it and to the furthering of one’s care itself. Caring projects an open-ended commitment and looks to the future. It is in this sense that the free play of the cognitive faculties seeks its own indefinite perpetuation. The principle of judgment entails an imperative to care about the world for its own sake, and the judgment of taste models such care.

The purpose of this chapter is to set the stage for the book and for the upcoming chapters. We first overview classical information-theoretic problems and solutions. We then discuss emerging applications of information-theoretic methods in various data-science problems and, where applicable, refer the reader to related chapters in the book. Throughout this chapter, we highlight the perspectives, tools, and methods that play important roles in classic information-theoretic paradigms and in emerging areas of data science. Table 1.1 provides a summary of the different topics covered in this chapter and highlights the different chapters that can be read as a follow-up to these topics.

In this paper I first worry that Rorty’s attack on various conceptions of “the world” has an alarming tendency to veer from opposition to the kind of realism that he associates with various philosophers, such as Plato, Descartes, or even Kant, into skepticism about ordinary activities including those of observing things and referring to them. I try to uncover the roots of this slide in various semantic doctrines, and explore the distinction between minimalist or deflationist theories of truth, and any wider, and less plausible general doctrine of semantic minimalism.

Ernst Mach’s Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit is now widely regarded as occupying a pivotal position in his oeuvre. Erik C. Banks called it a ‘roman à clef’. More generally, it is safe to say that the law of energy conservation played a central role in Mach’s thought. He frequently referred to it in his publications to illustrate how science works. This chapter has a two-fold aim. First, it sets his reflections on energy conservation against the background of its nineteenth-century history. Mach appears as a particularly astute observer of his own time. Second, it relates Mach’s comments on the law to his overall philosophy. Although in the second half of the nineteenth century the importance of the law of energy conservation was generally acknowledged, there was no consensus on what the law actually meant. Its name, discoverer, formulation, justification, and implications were all subject to debate. Mach was at the same time a participant in this debate (interpreting the law of energy conservation) and a commentator on it (interpreting debates on the law of energy conservation). In the process, he developed a new understanding of scientific meaning as grounded in communication, practice, and history.