Publication 8159

The target article by Davis & Perusse provides an occasion to isolate theoretical concepts that explain how certain nonhuman animals might construct a sense of number. The authors implicitly challenge the conventional belief that the mind of a nonhuman animal is incapable of performing the operations underpinning the construction of number. It would surprise me if that conventional belief is not altered in the future. In fact, I attribute a unitizing operation to any organism that is capable of constructing concepts of objects as externalized, permanent objects with an existence independent of the organism experiencing them.