With the examples of aggressive mimicry we have considered so far, mind games and cognition have been

relevant primarily in the context of the prey’s response to the mimic’s signals. Yet it is the signal maker’s (i.e. the aggressive mimic’s) behaviour that has been most responsible for our interest in investigating aggressive selleck chemicals mimicry from a cognitive perspective. Before we shift our attention to the aggressive mimic’s behaviour, however, we need to indicate our stance towards the terms ‘mind’ and ‘cognition’. There are many reasons why cognition has a long history of being a notoriously controversial topic (Dennett, 1996). This includes a tradition of using ‘cognition’ and ‘mental’ more or less interchangeably, accompanied by a traditional notion that ‘mind’ is some sort of separate reality to which people have unique access (Descartes, 1637/1994). Minsky (1986, p. 287) famously expressed an alternative view by saying ‘minds are simply what brains do’. Instead of being a definition, this catchy phrase serves as a way of expressing a radical departure from Descartes’ view and an active decision not to propose a formal definition. ‘What brains do’ is accessible to scientific investigation and, if we gain a sufficiently detailed understanding

of what brains XL765 do, then the impression of needing a formal definition of ‘mind’ and the notion of there being a purely philosophical problem to address should recede into the background. Sometimes, ‘cognition’ is defined simply as ‘information processing’ (e.g. Shettleworth, 2009). However, when considering the interface between aggressive mimicry and animal cognition, we

prefer instead to emphasize representation. Representation has often been envisaged as a key attribute at the boundary between what does and does not qualify as cognitive (Damasio, 1994; Maunsell, 1995; Markman & Dietrich, 2000; but see Epstein, 1982). Vision is the context in which representation is especially often considered by psychologists, and this bias may tempt us to equate representation with something selleck kinase inhibitor like a picture in the animal’s head – a mental picture, or imagery (Neiworth & Rilling, 1987; Kosslyn, Ganis & Thompson, 2003; but see Pylyshyn, 2003a,b). Yet, we need a concept of representation that will be more basic and not unique to vision, and we do not really have to imply pictures in the animal’s head. We are happy to adopt Gallistel’s (1989) proposal that representation in the context of cognition functions in a way that is analogous to the way isomorphism functions in mathematics (e.g. the isomorphism between algebraic and graphical computations in geometry). In the case of representation, isomorphism refers to the formal correspondence between external reality (i.e. features of the environment) and the neural processes within an animal (Burge, 2010).