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Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as “one of degree and not of kind” (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level specification as to where human and nonhuman animals' abilities to approximate a PSS are similar and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds.

After decades of effort by some of our brightest human and non-human minds, there is still little consensus on whether or not non-human animals understand anything about the unobservable mental states of other animals or even what it would mean for a non-verbal animal to understand the concept of a 'mental state'. In the present paper, we confront four related and contentious questions head-on: (i) What exactly would it mean for a non-verbal organism to have an 'understanding' or a 'representation' of another animal's mental state? (ii) What should (and should not) count as compelling empirical evidence that a non-verbal cognitive agent has a system for understanding or forming representations about mental states in a functionally adaptive manner? (iii) Why have the kind of experimental protocols that are currently in vogue failed to produce compelling evidence that non-human animals possess anything even remotely resembling a theory of mind? (iv) What kind of experiments could, at least in principle, provide compelling evidence for such a system in a non-verbal organism?

We are in vehement agreement with most of Vaesen's key claims. But Vaesen fails to consider or rebut the possibility that there are deep causal dependencies among the various cognitive traits he identifies as uniquely human. We argue that “higher-order relational reasoning” is one such linchpin trait in the evolution of human tool use, social intelligence, language, and culture.

In our opinion, the discontinuity between extant human and nonhuman minds is much broader and deeper than most researchers admit. We are happy to report that Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) target article strongly corroborates our unpopular hypothesis, and that the comparative evidence, in turn, bolsters E&L's provocative argument. Both a Universal Grammar and the “mental continuity” between human and nonhuman minds turn out to be modern myths.

In our target article, we argued that there is a profound functional discontinuity between the cognitive abilities of modern humans and those of all other extant species. Unsurprisingly, our hypothesis elicited a wide range of responses from commentators. After responding to the commentaries, we conclude that our hypothesis lies closer to Darwin's views on the matter than to those of many of our contemporaries.

We are big fans of propositions. But we are not big fans of the “propositional approach” proposed by Mitchell et al. The authors ignore the critical role played by implicit, non-inferential processes in biological cognition, overestimate the work that propositions alone can do, and gloss over substantial differences in how different kinds of animals and different kinds of cognitive processes approximate propositional representations.

Recently, a pair of papers appeared inCurrent Biologyclaiming that chimpanzees may have a human-like understanding of death (Anderson et al. 2010; Biro et al. 2010). In the first paper, boldly entitled, “Pan Thanatology,” Anderson et al. (2010) describe how a group of chimpanzees living in a Scottish safari park “grieved” over the death of an elderly female chimp named Pansy. The researchers claim that a chimp named Chippie “appeared to test for signs of life by closely inspecting [Pansy’s] mouth and manipulating her limbs” (Anderson et al. 2010:R350). They admit that Chippie also attacked the corpse three times,

Simply put, social cognition comprises cognitive processes that are applied to social behavior. That may sound trivially obvious; however, there are some tricky waters to be navigated in this thimble-sized definition. What is social and what is cognition? One important issue concerns the question of whether social cognition is, indeed, special and distinct from, say, physical cognition. Examples of behaviors and capacities that are examined under the rubric of social cognition include individual recognition, social partner preferences, development and maintenance of relationships (e.g., reconciliation and alliances), triadic relationships (including transitive inference), morality, social preferences, theory of mind, contingent social coordination,

Simply put, social cognition comprises cognitive processes that are applied to social behavior. That may sound trivially obvious; however, there are some tricky waters to be navigated in this thimble-sized definition. What is social and what is cognition? One important issue concerns the question of whether social cognition is, indeed, special and distinct from, say, physical cognition. Examples of behaviors and capacities that are examined under the rubric of social cognition include individual recognition, social partner preferences, development and maintenance of relationships (e.g., reconciliation and alliances), triadic relationships (including transitive inference), morality, social preferences, theory of mind, contingent social coordination,