Kristin A Andrews

Biography

I am Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and sometimes Director of the Cognitive Science Program at York University, in Toronto. My interests in animal and child social cognition and communication have always extended beyond the armchair, and I have worked with dolphins in Hawaii (Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory), children in Minnesota (Institute for Child Development), and orangutans in Borneo (Samboja Lestari Reintroduction Project). My main research area is in the philosophy of psychology. My book Do Apes Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology was published by MIT Press in 2012. I criticize the mainstream folk psychology and theory of mind debates, and argue that rather than reading minds, for the most part human folk psychology consists of reading people. Like in most of my research, in this book I integrate philosophical research with empirical work done with human children, adults, and other great apes. Research interests: Anthropomorphism; Cognition in the field; False belief explanation;Folk psychology; Great ape ethics; Methodology in animal cognition research; Moral psychology; Nature and evolution of belief; Orangutan pantomime; Psychological explanation; Theories of human uniqueness; Theory of mind or Mindreading Teaching interests: Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Psychology; Applied Ethics; Philosophy and Animal Minds; Seminar in Philosophy of Mind; Seminar in Cognitive Science; Minds, Brains and Machines; Philosophy of Biology

Research Interest

Philosophy , Psychology , Animal Cognition, Scientific Methodology, Social Cognition, Folk Psychology