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    It is not the case that It is more parsimonious to assume that chimpanzees can understand what others can and cannot see (mindreading) rather than assuming chimpanzees have learned a different behavioral rule for every relevant situation involving a competitor's line of gaze.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Parsimony in hypothesis selection requires that the simpler hypothesis actually have equal or greater predictive power, not merely fewer posited entities.
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    • 2.Behavioral rule-learning accounts, formalized by Heyes and others, predict chimpanzee gaze-following data at least as well as mindreading accounts without invoking unobservable mental state attribution.
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    • 3.When two hypotheses have equivalent empirical adequacy, invoking Occam's razor to favor the mentalistic one inverts the principle, since 'mindreading' posits additional unobservable intentional states.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The 'single capacity' framing of mindreading smuggles in theoretical unity that has not been independently established for chimpanzee cognition.
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    • 2.Dennett's heterophenomenological critique establishes that inferring a unified intentional system from behavioral flexibility conflates the intentional stance with genuine mental state possession.
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    • 3.A genuinely parsimonious account must not assume the cognitive architecture whose existence is precisely what is at issue in the debate over animal mindreading.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Chimpanzees use information about what a competitor has visual access to in order to decide whether to go for a reward.
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    • 2.Positing a single capacity for understanding others' visual access requires fewer assumptions than positing that chimpanzees have learned a distinct behavioral rule for each relevant situation involving a competitor's line of gaze.
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