Abstract
In speaking of the consciousness of animals, affection for one’s own pets is bound to be received as a mark of dangerously reduced rigor. I am tempted to offer the sanguine anecdote of my dog’s symbolic behavior — how he nuzzles me in a characteristic way, at a certain hour, in order to get me to take him out; how he touches my hand with his nose, starts for the stairs, waits for me to put on my jacket, trots to the door, pauses for me to follow, nudges his leash expectantly, moves to nuzzle me again, waits at the door, and so on. Some will see in this a grand self-deception; others, a genuinely instructive specimen; still others, a convenient façon de parler. There’s little point in mere insistence: the obvious puzzle concerns how to address the question of animal consciousness, animal communication, animal thought, animal intelligence. But more than this, the validity of the evidence favorable to significant claims of animal competence below the level of genuine language itself entails a distinctive view of the empirical nature of the issues. It is not in the least unreasonable to resist the separation of apparent questions of fact and questions of why it is that we regard particular questions as empirical questions of fact. But the issues regarding animal consciousness lend a peculiar relevance to the conceptual linkage between these two sorts of question.
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Notes
The matter is inevitably quarrelsome and spoiled by evidence both of premature conclusions and doctrinal prejudice. Part of the trouble lies with the fact that we actually lack a clear criterion of linguistic ability among nonhuman animals, and part lies with an excessive reliance on behavioristic considerations. Cf. David Premack, Intelligence in Ape and Man (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1976).
Cf. John Cunningham Lilly, The Mind of the Dolphin (New York: Doubleday, 1967).
See Joseph Margolis, Persons and Minds (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978).
This corrects, in a sense, the misleading way in which Thomas Nagel poses the question, in his paper ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ Philosophical Review, LXXXIII (1974). Cf. Donald N. Griffin, The Question of Animal Awareness (New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1976).
K. D. Roeder, ‘Ethology and Neurophysiology’, Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, XX (1963).
Niko Tinbergen, The Study of Instinct (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969 [1951]), p.5.
Konrad Lorenz, “Do animals undergo subjective experience?” (1963) in Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Vol. 2, Robert Martin (transl.), (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 323–324.
Ibid., p. 334.
B. F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior (New York: Macmillan, 1953), p. 53. Cf. Hugh M. Lacey and Howard Rachlin, ‘Behavior, Cognition and Theories of Choice’, Behaviorism, VI (1978).
I explore the issue, in the context of Joseph Bogen’s theories, in ‘Puccetti on Brains, Minds, and Fersons’, Philosophy of Science, XLII (1975). Both Bogen and Michael Gazzaniga acknowledge the distinction. Cf. J. E. Bogen, ‘The Other Side of the Brain I: Dysgraphia and Dyscopia following Cerebral Commissurotomy’, Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Society, XXXIV (1969); ‘The Other Side of the Brain II: An Appositional Mind’, Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Society, XXXIV (1969); and Michael Gazzaniga, The Bisected Brain (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970). But neither is fully prepared to characterize the properties of the linguistic that are not confiined to speech phenomena. Without doing so, however, it is utterly futile to talk of lateralizing language, to distinguish between linguistic and nonlinguistic mental operations (Bogen’s special concern), or even to detect the presence of a determinately distinct physical correlate of a given mental activity.
Oscar S. M. Marin, Myrna F. Schwartz, and Eleanor M. Saffran, ‘Origins and Distribution of Language’, in Michael S. Gazzaniga (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology, Vol. 2 (Neuropsychology) (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1979), pp. 181, 193 . Although recent studies have gone some length in correcting the radical tendency to lateralize consciousness, linguistic comprehension, and other similar global functions of intelligence, there remains considerable evidence of an uncritical habit of ascribing such functions to the hemispheres themselves. Cf. for example, R. W. Sperry, E. Zaidel, and D. Zaidel, ‘Self Recognition and Social Awareness in the Deconnected Minor Hemisphere’, Neuropsychologia, XVII (1979);
Jerre Levy, ‘Manifestations and Irplications of Shifting Hemi -Inattention in Commissurotomy Patients’, in E. A. Weinstein and R. P. Friedland (eds.), Advances in Neurology, Vol. 18 (New York: Raven Press, 1977). The conceptual complications of making such ascriptions are, characteristically, simply ignored.
Cf. Marin et al., ibid., p. 180. Cf. also, R. E. Myers, ‘Comparative Neurology of Vocalization and Speech: Proof of a Dichotomy’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, CCLXXX (1976); and H. D. Steklis and S. R. Hamad, ‘From Hand to Mouth: Some Critical Stages in the Evolution of Language’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, CCLXXX (1976).
Cf. Marin et. al., op. cit., pp. 180–181. Cf. also, R. L. Holloway, ‘Faleoneurological Evidence for Language Origins’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, CCLXXX (1976).
See for example, Eric H. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (New York: John Wiley, 1967);
Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, The Sound Pattern of English (New York: Harper & Row, 1968);
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, enlarged edition (New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1972);
Edward Walker (ed.), Explorations in the Biology of Language (Montgomery, Vt.: Bradford Books, 1978).
But see, also, the telling concessions regarding the provisional status of the theory, and the possibility that semantic and nonlinguistic experiential considerations may decisively and adversely affect any attempt to isolate (biologically) the deep syntactic structure of natural languages, in Noam Chomsky, Language and Responsibility, trans. John Viertel (New York: Fantheon, 1979), pp. 152–153.
Cf. Marin et al., op. cit., pp. 186–187. Cf. also, P. K. Juhl and J. D. Miller, ‘Speech Perception by the Chinchilla: Voiced-voiceless Distinction in Alveolar Plosive Consonants’, Science, CXC (19 7S); and A. M. Liberman et al., ‘Perception of the Speech Code’, Psychological Review, LXXIV (1967).
Marin et al., op. cit., pp.188–189.
See Jerry A. Fodor, The Language of Thought (New York: Crowell, 1975) — the most explicit attempt to develop an innatist account of human concepts; also, Jerrold J. Katz, ‘Recent Issues in Semantic Theory’, Foundations of Language, III (1967); and Margolis, Persons and Minds, Chapter 8.
Cf. also, Joseph Margolis, Philosophy of Psychology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984).
The most convenient summary of this aspect of Descartes’ position is provided in Zeno Vendler, Res Cogitans (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), Chapter 7, skewed, however, in accord with Vendler’s own views.
R.R. Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain; An Argument for Interactionism (Berlin and New York: Springer International, 1977).
Norman Geschwind, ‘The Varieties of Naming Errors’ (1967), in Selected Papers on Language and the Brain (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974).
Cf. Geschwind, ‘Disconnexion Syndromes in Animals and Man’, loc. cit.
The full range of reductive possibilities — as well as their prospects of success — are canvassed in Margolis, Persons and Minds, Philosophy of Psychology.
Cf. Peter Weygolde, ‘Communication in Crustaceans and Arachnids’, in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), How Animals Communicate (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977);
also, Jonathan Bennett, Rationality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964).
See for example Charles Taylor’s useful criticism of the thesis offered by E. C. Tolman, in The Explanation of Behaviour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), Ch. 4; cf. E. C. Tolman, B. F. Ritchie, and D. Kalish, ‘Studies in Spatial Learning, I, Orientation and the Shortcut’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, XXVI (1946); also, Margolis, Philosophy of Psychology, Chapter 4.
The usual difficulties alleged appear in Vendler, loc. cit.; Norman Malcolm, ‘Thoughtless Brutes’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, XLVI (1972–73);
F. N. Sibley, ‘Analysing Seeing (1)’, in F. N. Sibley (ed.), Perception: A Philosophical Symposium (London: Methuen, 1971);
Donald Davidson ‘Thought and Talk’, in Samuel Guttenplan (ed.), Mind and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). Cf. Margolis, Persons and Minds, Chapter 9.
Cf. David Stenhouse, The Evolution of Intelligence (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973).
Cf. Roderick M. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), Chapter 1;
also, Joseph Margolis, Knowledge and Existence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), Chapter 2.
Davidson, ‘Thought and Talk’, p. 8.
Ibid., p. 9.
Wilfrid Sellars, ‘Conceptual Change’, in Glenn Pearce and Patrick Maynard (eds.), Conceptual Change (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1973), p. 82.
Davidson, op. cit., p. 10.
Loc. cit.
Davidson, op. cit., p. 22.
Ibid., p.13.
Alfred Tarski, ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, IV (1944).
A related thesis is offered in Donald Davidson, ‘Mental Events’, in Lawrence Foster and J. M. Swanson (eds.), Experience & Theory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970). But it is dubiously linked to a form of mind-body identity; cf. Joseph Margolis, ‘Prospects for an Extensionalist Psychology of Action’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, XI (1981).
Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931–1935), Vol. 2, par. 307.;
The ascription of symbolically signifiicant behavior to the apes is often thought to be thrown into doubt by the lack of precision regarding the nature and conditions of such behavior. See for example, E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Duane M. Rumbaugh, and Sally Boysen, ‘Linguistically Mediated Tool Use and Exchange by Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)’, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, I (1978); together with ‘Open Peer Commentary and Authors’ Responses’. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence is clearly promising (625–628).
See, for instance, H. S. Terrace, ‘Is Problem-solving Language?’ Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, XXXI (1979); H. S. Terrace, L. A. Petitto, R. J. Saunders, and T. G. Bevar, ‘Can an Ape Create a Sentence?’ Science, CCVI (1979); David Premack, Intelligence in Ape and Man; E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane M. Rumbaugh, ‘Symbolization, Language, and Chimpanzees: A Theoretical Reevaluation Based on Initial Language Acquisition Processes in Four Young Pan Troglodytes’, Brain and Language, VI (1978); E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Duane M. Rumbaugh, and Sally Boysen, ‘Do Apes Use Language?’ American Scientist, LXCIII (1980).
Jonathan Bennett considers animal language very briefly, in Linguistic Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). But his claims are too extreme. For example, he states flatly: “A linguistic utterance is for communication in the sense that it is performed with the individual intention of getting a hearer to believe something. In infra-human displays, the ‘utterance’ does not manifest an individual intention, and sometimes not even an individual goal of a lower kind; what it does manifest is a specieswide analogue of intention — namely a rigid behavioural disposition whose biological function is to transmit information” (p. 204). Nevertheless, he himself concedes “that captive chimpanzees sometimes exhibit individual intentions to communicate seems to be beyond doubt”; he insists “only” that, in the wild, their communicative displays do not “involve any such intention” (pp. 203–204). His thesis, strictly speaking, is a non sequitur as far as the capacity for linguistic and nonlinguistic communicative intentions are concerned. But his account of animals in the wild — whether true or false — does explain how communication may be biologically developed without communicative intent. There may be a deeper difficulty in Bennett’s account, namely, that he has tied his theory of language too intimately to H. P. Grice’s theory of speaker’s meanings and speaker’s intentions. Cf. H. P. Grice, ‘Meaning’, Philosophical Review, LXCI (1957); ‘Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning’, Foundations of Language, IV (1968); and ‘Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions’, Philosophical Review, LXXCIII (1969); and Joseph Margolis, ‘Meaning, Speakers’ Intentions, and Speech Acts’, The Review of Metaphysics, XXVI (1973);
but also, Bennett, op. cit., Chapter 7. Along lines similar to those opposing Davidson’s thesis, it is certainly not clear that intentions need to be linguistically restricted; or, that, in the wild, individual animals must fail to exhibit individual — even idiosyncratic — intentions; or, that animals must fail to “intend to communicate” in the wild, though capable there of having intentions (cf. pp. 203). Whatever its strengths and weaknesses in the context of speech, Grice’s view of intentions has, as such, absolutely no bearing on the reasonableness of ascribing intentions — even communicative intentions — to unlanguaged animals.
See David Premack and Guy Woodruff, ‘Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind?’ The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, IV (1978).
In telligen ce in Ape and Man, Chapter 8.
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Margolis, J. (1984). Animal and Human Minds. In: Culture and Cultural Entities. Synthese Library, vol 170. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7694-9_3
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