I come from a background of history and philosophy of the life sciences.

My question is: Wouldn't there be simpler explanations for monogamy in non-human animals than having a concept of self and a concept of other? Object permanence is a good start, I would guess. Also, for the "choice"-part: would you say that monogamous animals choose their mates rather than been drawn to each other by their instincts?

That is perfect, I really appreciate your repose! Especially given that you have e background in the philosophy of the life sciences.

Oh, I could have been more clear on this point: I certainly don't want to say that certain creatures having a self-conception might help *explain* why those creatures enter into monogamous relationships while others do not. (If I misunderstood what you were asking please correct me. But that's what I understood your question to imply). So I agree with you in that I don't see how trying to explain monogamy in terms of the possession of a self-conception could possibly bear fruit. The question I want to ask starts by remaining neutral as to which creatures might have a self-conception. Other than humans, I simply have no idea which might and which might not. And I would say that looking at the empirical literature, the various different ways we currently have for testing whether other creatures have a sense of self (the "mirror test" being the most famous example) reflects the fact that researchers in this field don't have a very good idea as to what it is they are looking for or how to test for it (I'm speaking generally here, I don't think that criticism applies to researchers across the board).

I see my question (or proposal for collaborative thinking) as rather modest as a result. All I am saying is this: Might species with the capacity for monogamy make them particularly good candidates for creatures that may have a self-conception? So just to be clear, note that In proposing this what I would like to find out is which creatures might potentially have the pre-conditions for a self-conception--or maybe a full-blown self-conception-- and I'm suggesting (well I am really asking whether anyone thinks there may be some value to this idea or if anyone would like to explore it with me but whether) we might take the class of species that are known to be monogamous as our clue to which species we might want to try focusing our studies on. So my question doesn't concern how to *explain* monogamy, but rather a suggestion as to on potential route of determining which creatures have "conceptions of selves".

To be perfectly honest, I can't see a way as to how the results of object-permanence testing might illuminate questions regarding the possession of a self-conception. Perhaps you could say a little more for me about how that might work so that I could understand where you're coming from?

As for the "choice-part". If I used the term "choice" in my original question that was a mistake on my part. However, while personally, I don't think it matters much whether we characterize how a mate gets "picked" (if I can use that as a neutral non-intentional term) in intentionalistic terms or in psychophysical (or biological) terms (instinct) I have no problem agreeing with you that it is almost certainly a matter of instinct and other non-intentional factors that determine who mates with who--or, in your words, who gets drawn to one another. But I think whatever the case turned out to be it wouldn't affect the overall question I am trying to ask.

As I see it, the reason monogamy might be special (in this particular sense, in that it could sever as a pre-condition to acquiring a self-concept) is that it seems to presuppose the capacity for recognition of one entity by another over an extended period of time (their lives) and that the capacity to recognize one individual as 'this' individual entails recognizing others as being not-'this'-individual. Thus it presupposes the capacity for *exclusive* recognition of one individual as that particular individual and as having *that* practical significance i.e., as having the practice significance that obliges me to act toward that other in certain ways that I would not with one outside our relationship. And it follows from recognizing a certain being as having *that * practical significance, and from the definition of monogamy itself, that a *commitment to* the other is enacted (this commitment need not be a conscious commitment as long as it is acted out in their behavior). So to sum up, If any of this is right, you would have two creatures who recognize one another as distinct, unique, and different from the rest. Because they recognize the other as having a certain practical significance, this significance entails that they will be obliged to act toward them or engage in certain activities together with them in ways that they would not with other members of the species. And along with the notion of practical significance, there comes that of 'commitment to', commitment to one and not another. This would make it such that you have two conscious beings mutually recognizing each other, as acting reciprocally as both recognized and recognizer. To be recognized as an individual self means taking or treating the one recognized in a certain manner. With this, it at least then becomes possible to 'internalize' how one is treated externally and thereby make a reflexive self-application of the concept of how one is treated by the other as being what one truly is (I am treated badly as a child and so as I develop I internalize a conception of myself that I am "a bad person/child, as though how I am treated by others is how or what I am 'in-myself'.

I'm sure by now I've lost you, either due to the excessive length of the response or because all that I have said didn't make any sense ha-ha. I hope to hear back. Thank you for your response. I am going to link a copy of the notes I have written so far--just bullet points of connected ideas (unfinished) in case anyone is interested. I'm sure the notes will be of far more help in clarifying what I am trying to get at than anything in this response ha-ha. Thanks again! (If anyone does read the attached file, please excuse the somewhat pretentious language and the exclusive use of "we". I didn't initially plan on sharing it like this haha)

Thank you for the clarification!

I found your terminology in the starting question rather confusing. Dou you want to use phychological terms, but not carry the weight of psychological concepts like intentionality?

Another example is your notion of monogamy: you say that it's a commitment, which implies a lot of psychological capacities. On the other hand, you don't want a strictly concsious notion of commitment.

What I meant by object permanence: To be monogamous, an animals has to have the capacity to recognize its partner as its partner even after periods of separation. The notion of recognition would not be a philosophical one, but one that is based in tha capacities of perception physiology and memory.

If I was you, I would consider, what kind of empirical research or what kind of philosophical theory is the basis of your argument and try to go straightforward from there. Easy to say!

Anna Klassen Thank you for the follow-up, you've been very helpful!

Ah! That is a great question, it is the very same question that I seemed to go back and forth on the more I thought about the idea. I think that the most prudent way forward is to try to employ a vocabulary that makes as little use of intentional terms as possible (where 'intentional' would refer to what most would consider as exclusively "mental" capacities). My reasoning for that is simply because I think it would be best not to presuppose that the creatures in question have any capacities that are not either directly observable or capacities that are presupposed by those that are directly observable (i.e., to try to restrict myself to only admitting--or mentioning, to be more precise--of those capacities that can be directly observed through their behavior as well and capacities that must be presupposed by those observable capacities). The principle there would be something like this: One cannot count as having the capacity P (e.g., eat food) unless one also has the capacity Q (e.g, a digestive and metabolic capacity). Where 'P' is the observable behavior and 'Q' refers to a capacity that is a condition for the possibility of the behavioral capacity P, which would license the inference that Q must be present since P would not be possible without it. I want to remain as neutral *as possible* with respect to questions over which psychological or intentional capacities animals have since I know that that is a controversial issue and given the purposes of this idea (or hopefully what will become a paper) I would like to remain silent on that. The Idea is to offer it up as a possible framework or as something that could provide clues on how to begin going about empirical research that would seek to study which animals have the capacity for a conception-of-self. (I am aware that If I go through with this that almost certainly no one will actually take this up as a research program; I'm not that naive.) So my project would be to say:

• "look here are some capacities P1....Pn without which, I think, one could not (as far as I can tell) have a self-conception. Having the capacity to enter into monogamous relationships seems to require that one has the capacities P1...Pn. Since the conditions for the possibility of having a self-conception match (or there is a significant enough overlap in) the conditions without which monogamy would not be possible, then maybe a good place to start our empirical investigations into the question of which creatures may have a conception-of-self would be with creatures we know have the capacity to engage in monogamous relations.

Hopefully, that was a little more clear. 'Commitment', you are right, does seem to carry quite a bit of intentional/mentalistic baggage. But I think it need not. I think the concept of 'commitment' can be cashed out in terms of motor-intentional behavior, which would not require that we make any reference to internal mental states. As I see it commitments are something we *do*, or more precisely they are things that motivate us to action; the activity constitutes the expression of the commitment. If so, Commitments can be discerned through careful observation of the motor-intentional activity and the social relations that the one being observed is tied in with. Commitments aren't in the head. If I go out and cheat on my partner (someone I'm committed to) I can't then say that I am committed to that person, say, because I 'believe' I am. I think most people would say that my actions were proof that I was not, in fact, committed to that person. And surely my partner will not be relieved if I tell them I am still committed to them, and site my belief that I am as a reason. Does that sound right? Or do you think I am overlooking something here?

What the language of 'commitment' certainly does commit me to is that these creatures can be properly regarded as having normative statutes (I see commitment as a normative notion rather than an intentional one). Since if x commits to y, then x thereby incurs a set of obligations regarding how x *ought to* act with respect to y--that is to say, commitments have downstream commitive-consequences which entail that certain behaviors be carried out and that I satisfy some specifiable set of duties I have to my significant other. These can too can be cashed out without mental talk. One, big step forward I have made so far in my notes that addresses this issue is this:

1. appetitive awareness has a threefold structure, epitomized by the relations between hunger, eating, and food. (I use these three relations as a starting point. I need to come up with a different set of terms that stand in the same relation as these three. Its a starting point, a way of getting off the ground; I know these terms aren't relevant but they served the right function to allow me to express the rest of the idea which, I think, could have some promise for starting this thing)

2. The three elements are:

a) an attitude or desire, e.g. *hunger*,

b) a responsive activity, e.g. *eating*, and

c) a significance, e.g. *food*.

The three principal relations are:

d) The attitude must motivate the activity, in the sense of activating a (more or less reliable, in a sense determined by the assessments in (f) below) disposition to respond differentially to objects and kin.

e) Responding to an object by engaging in the activity is taking or treating it in practice as having a significance defined by the attitude that motivates the activity. This is the subjective significance of the object.

f) The desiring attitude assesses the object, implicitly attributing to it an objective significance, accordingly as responding to it by engaging in the activity the attitude motivates does or does not satisfy the desire. If it does not, if what the object was subjectively or "for" the animal does not coincide with what it was objectively, or *in itself*, that is, if the activity was not successful in satisfying the motivating desire, then an error has been committed. In that case, the desire motivates changing the differential responsive disposition to engage in the associated activity when activated by the desire and stimulated by a range of objects.

To understand recognition, this threefold structure of appetitive awareness must be applied twice:

· It is the structure of the whole thing: “Self-consciousness is desire.” [§174]; recognition is a form of appetitive awareness.

· The significance attributed to an object, what it is for the organism exhibiting the appetitive awareness in question, is to be appetitively aware: to be something that things can be something *for*. That is, the significance attributed by engaging in a responsive activity and assessed by the motivating attitude must itself exhibit this structure of appetitive awareness.

The three-fold structure of appetitive awareness (TASA) tells us that the two big questions that must be answered are these:

· What activity is it that institutes this significance (namely, having the TASA)? That is, what is it that one must do, how must one respond to something, to count thereby as taking or treating it as exhibiting the TASA? What is to the TASA as eating is to food?

· What desire or other attitude is it that motivates that activity and assesses the success of taking something as having the appetitive significance of being a TSOA, i.e. being something things can be something for? What is to the TASA as hunger is to food?

Two suggestions:

· We may call what I must do, the activity that I must engage in, in order thereby to be taking or treating something in practice as something things can be something for, “recognizing” that other creature. Recognizing others is attributing to them the practical significance of exhibiting the tripartite structure of orectic awareness: taking them to be takers, subjects for whom things can have a practical significance relative to a desire and mediated by an activity.

The desire or attitude that is the third element completing the TASA whose attitude is recognizing and whose significance is exhibiting the TASA is a desire for recognition: the desire that others take or treat one in practice as a taker, as something things can be something for (i.e, a partner), as one whose attitudes (appetitive or normative) institute of significances.

(Again, I'm sure you probably aren't going to see this--and if you do I am sorry for making you read so much--But I wanted to say that I saw you have a paper on the problem of animal subjectivity: I'm looking forward to begin reading it the tomorrow! Thanks for your continued help! Oh and if you did get that far and were wondering where that quote came from, or what relevance it had, it is from Hegel's Phenomenology.)