I take this semester for Seminar about the spirit of the animals. From this you can in the near term and expect more about animals whose mental qualities or abilities. (We hold the seminar on the book 'The Spirit of the Animals, which last year by Perler and game was released.)
One of the big questions is of course the can, whether animals think. For example, can believe the dog who follows a cat does not see that it has climbed to the chestnut and barks instead the adjacent beech, that the cat is on the book? Known opponent of the thesis that animals can think, is Davidson. He claims, first, that we already own animals therefore can not attribute thoughts, because we in principle the content of their thoughts can not specify. We can not, because animals have no language. Second, we can attribute to animals any ideas, because whenever you can only attribute a whole network of beliefs, etc., and this would have to then belong convictions, the animals certainly do not have. (This all was out of my head, I hope I'm not very Davidson falsified.)
I think it is obvious that animals have no idea, formulated in language. For example, thinks the dog is certainly not, "I'm sure the cat is on the book!" But it might be that thoughts must be formulated not necessarily linguistically in order to have a content and therefore to count as a thought. It seems to me that is most plausible that some kind of mental representations are, which also can have (higher) animals and from a functional perspective, play a similar role as our linguistically structured thought. The dog would have a mental representation that is caused by the fact that he has seen the cat walking towards book (he has just not seen it yet then jumped on the chestnut.) These representations led to the book that he barks. If the dog, the cat will see it suddenly on the chestnut would, then it would in 'trigger' a different representation, and he would bark as the chestnut.
Any objections?
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