Chimpanzee minds: suspiciously human?

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Abstract

Chimpanzees undoubtedly form concepts related to the statistical regularities in behavior. But do they also construe such abstractions in terms of mental states – that is, do they possess a ‘theory of mind’? Although both anecdotal and experimental data have been marshaled to support this idea, we show that no explanatory power or economy of expression is gained by such an assumption. We suggest that additional experiments will be unhelpful as long as they continue to rely upon determining whether subjects interpret behavioral invariances in terms of mental states. We propose a paradigm shift to overcome this limitation.

Section snippets

Mental similarity: real or apparent?

The first possibility is that the chimpanzee's mind seems similar to ours precisely because it is similar. Biological parsimony would seem to support such an assumption: chimpanzees and humans arose from a common ancestor about six million years ago. Alas, invoking biological parsimony will not help. After all, humans and chimpanzees are different in several other important ways, but this in no way denies their evolutionary relatedness. By way of analogy, the fact that some bats echolocate but

Thinking about mental states

Let us examine these issues in the context of one of the most hotly-contested questions under comparative investigation: is the ability to conceive of the mental world a peculiarly human ability, or is it shared by other species, including, perhaps, chimpanzees?

To begin, chimpanzees (like humans), probably form abstract representations of the behavior of others. Each instance of another chimpanzee pursing his lips, hair bristling, need not be separately represented and understood. Rather, a

The reinterpretation hypothesis

At this point, some readers may be scratching their heads: ‘Okay, you think that humans automatically interpret certain behaviors as evidence of theory of mind, and you agree that this process works reasonably well when the agents are other humans. So why shouldn't it work equally well with chimpanzees?’

The answer is simple: ‘Because we can easily imagine that theory of mind uniquely evolved in humans!’ Humans and chimpanzees undoubtedly inherited common mental structures for forming behavioral

Deceived into believing: what's really wrong with anecdotes

The most widely celebrated evidence for second-order mental states in chimpanzees is their ability to manipulate each other 10, 11, 12. The complexity of at least certain instances of chimpanzee ‘deception’ has frequently tempted the conclusion that the most plausible interpretation is that they are reasoning about what each other see, want, know and believe 12, 13. Other writers have balked, however, noting that it is trivial to imagine how organisms could produce deceptive behaviors without

Spinning our experimental wheels?

It directly follows that any experiments that rely upon a behavioral abstraction will be of little use, especially when this invariant is one the subject has previously witnessed, or that they are likely to have evolved to detect and exploit. Indeed, contrary to recent speculations [20], behavioral interactions that make the most ecological sense to the organism are precisely the ones that will be least diagnostic of whether the organism is reasoning about mental states and behavior, or

A conceptual solution: experiential mapping from self to other

Drawing on isolated research trends, we propose a shift to paradigms that develop and deploy techniques requiring subjects to make an extrapolation from their own experiences to the mental states of others. Subjects must be given an experience that they could not otherwise have predicted from the environment, and then researchers must determine whether they understand the nature of that experience.

The notion that ‘theory of mind’ involves, at its foundation, using one's own experiences to model

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge that this work was supported by a James S. McDonnell Centennial Award to D.J.P. We also thank Steve Giambrone for thoughtful comments on some of the ideas in this article.

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