Apes, Language, and the Human MindCurrent primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive and developmental psychology. |
Other editions - View all
Apes, Language, and the Human Mind E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh,Stuart Shanker,Talbot J. Taylor Limited preview - 1998 |
Apes, Language, and the Human Mind E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh,Stuart Shanker,Talbot J. Taylor No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
able actions animal cognition animal intelligence anthropomorphic ape language argument asked assertion ball behave bifurcationist bonobo brain Cartesian chase child childside chimpanzees common chimpanzees commonsense communicational abilities complex context critic Descartes Descartes's determine discourse Epistemic epistemological conception epistemological skepticism evidence example explain expression fact females forest gestures grammatical human infant infer innate intentions interaction Jeannine Kanzi and Panbanisha keyboard language games lexigrams linguistic look males Matata means mental metalinguistic claim method of evaluation mother nature nonhuman objects philosophes picture play possesses the concept Press the red primate problem psychological question reason red button refer response rhetorical rules Savage-Rumbaugh scientific sense sentence Sherman and Austin simply skeptical skills social someone sorry sort sounds speak speech sugar cane symbols talk Tamuli tell theory of mind things thought tickle tion understand utterances vervets vocal wanted words
Popular passages
Page 229 - ... fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Page 85 - I do not fail to say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax ; and yet what do I see from the window beyond hats and cloaks that might cover artificial machines, whose motions might be determined by springs...
Page 88 - Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
Page 81 - ... in all the visible corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps. All quite down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that in each remove differ very little one from the other.
Page 230 - In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.
Page 81 - There are some Brutes, that seem to have as much Knowledge and Reason, as some that are called Men: and the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, are so nearly join'd, that if you will take the lowest of one, and the highest of the other, there will scarce be perceived any great difference between them; and...
Page 87 - Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they were acting not through understanding but only from the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument which can be used in all kinds of situations...
Page 89 - ... well-endowed it may be, that can do the like. This does not happen because they lack the necessary organs, for we see that magpies and parrots can utter words as we do, and yet they cannot speak as we do: that is, they cannot show that they are thinking what they are saying.
Page 88 - But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do.
Page 88 - The first is that they could never use words, or put together other signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. For we can certainly conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words which correspond to bodily actions causing a change in its organs (eg if you touch it in one spot it asks what you want of it, if you touch it in another it cries out that you are hurting it, and so on).