This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

A dog believes his master is at the door, but can he also believe his master will come the day after tomorrow?

A question posed by the 20th century Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig

Wittgenstein. But what kinds of minds do animals have? What do they think? What are they capable

of thinking about? What do they believe?

Tim Crane, professor of philosophy at Cambridge,

has some human thoughts and beliefs on the matter.

Tim Crane, welcome to Philosophy Bytes.

Thanks, Nigel.

The topic we're going to focus on is Animal Mind. Welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thanks, Nigel.

The topic we're going to focus on is animal minds.

Some philosophers in the past have thought that animals don't have minds at all.

That's right.

Descartes, I suppose, is the most famous philosopher who said that explicitly that animals don't think because they don't have language and they don't have a soul.

Now the interesting thing is that that's one of the very few discussions really of the minds of animals in Western philosophy.

And what's strange is that there have been so few discussions because it's such a fascinating

philosophical question.

So few discussions and the one prominent one getting it so badly wrong.

I mean, anybody who's spent time with higher mammals will know that they have some kind of thought. Absolutely. There are two obviously incorrect answers to the question of what do animals think.

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