Animal language and thought

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Although Malcolm ( 1972-3 ) does not identify thought with language, he claims that the relationship is ‘so close that it is really senseless to conjecture that people may not have thoughts, and also really senseless to conjecture that animals may have thoughts'.

However, we know that animals think because ‘in real life we commonly employ the verb "think" in respect to animals'.

Clearly Malcolm believes that animal thinking does not involve havingthoughts, but says very little about how we are to understand it.

Behaviourists in both science and philosophy havedenied animal language and thought (see Behaviourism, analytic ; Behaviourism, methodological and scientific ). Although some behaviourists deny thought to humans as well, most reserve their deepest scepticism for animals.Quine ( 1960 ) takes it as obvious that animals do not have language, and that ascribing thoughts to animals is an ‘essentially dramatic idiom' - we imagine ourselves in the animal's place and say what thoughts we would have werewe the animal.

Davidson ( 1975 ) has produced the following argument for supposing that animals do not have thoughts: if an animal has a thought, then this thought must occur in a network of beliefs.

This follows fromDavidson's holism which he takes from Quine: thoughts or beliefs come in ‘webs', they cannot occur singly.

In orderto have a network of beliefs, an animal must have the concept of belief.

This is because having a network of beliefsrequires the ability to distinguish between someone holding a sentence to be true and the sentence actually beingtrue.

But having the concept of belief requires having language, for Davidson believes that this concept only arisesin the context of linguistic interpretation.

Since no animals have language they do not have the concept of belief.Since they do not have the concept of belief they do not have networks of beliefs.

Hence, they do not have beliefsat all (see Davidson, D.

§8 ).

What is striking about the arguments for HE, taken together, is that they turn on supposing a very close connection between language and thought.

All of the arguments that we have reviewedsuppose that having language is a necessary condition for having thoughts (although Malcolm grants that some kindof thinking may occur in the absence of language and thought).

Moreover, some of these philosophers (for example,Malcolm) think that having language is sufficient for having thoughts.

It is against this background that the apelanguage experiments of the 1960s and 1970s caught the attention of philosophers.

If it could be shown that apescould learn language then many philosophers would be convinced that apes are capable of having thoughts.

Indeed,some philosophers would be convinced by nothing short of this.

3 The ape language controversy Since the beginning of the twentieth century there have been at least half a dozen attempts to teach spoken language to anape.

In 1966 Beatrice and R.

Allen Gardner began teaching American Sign Language to a chimpanzee namedWashoe, and throughout the late 1960s and 1970s studies employing animals of different species using differentcommunication systems were undertaken by David Premack, Duane Rumbaugh, Roger Fouts, Francine Patterson andothers.

In some cases extravagant claims were made about the linguistic abilities of these apes.

These claims weredeflated by Herbert Terrace in the late 1970s.

From 1973 to 1977 Terrace studied a chimpanzee named NimChimpsky.

He concluded ( 1980 ) that there is no unequivocal evidence for supposing that apes can master syntactic, semantic or pragmatic aspects of language.

Terrace's results were devastating to the credibility andfunding base of the ape language projects.

The projects of Patterson and Fouts continue, funded primarily byprivate donations.

The Rumbaugh project, now headed by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, is one of the few that continuesto produce significant scientific publications.

Beginning in 1981 Savage-Rumbaugh turned her attention to bonobos(so-called ‘pygmy chimpanzees').

Using a specially designed keyboard connected to a speech synthesizer onebonobo, Kanzi, has shown a surprising understanding of spoken English.

He has a large vocabulary, is capable ofcommunicating novel information and clearly follows simple syntactic rules.

In a comparative study ( 1994 ) Savage- Rumbaugh concluded that the eight-year-old Kanzi's linguistic skills were superior to those of a normal human two-year-old.

The ape language studies have been controversial from the beginning and continue to be so today.Terrace and other critics accuse most researchers of inaccurate observation and analysis, overinterpretation andcuing desired behaviour.

Terrace has been faulted for failing to obtain results because of a lack of rapport with hissubject and an impersonal training regime.

Animal behaviour, like human behaviour, is indeterminate, description-relative and open to interpretation.

John Dupré ( 1991 ) has argued that the dispute over the ape language experiments primarily involves conflicts about the goals and methods of scientific research.

The critics demand thatclaims about the linguistic abilities of apes be backed by compelling evidence that conforms to the most rigorouscanons of scientific methodology.

However, in the case of humans, language develops in a highly complex andemotive context and the application of principles of charity is an important part of the language-learning process(see Charity, principle of §4 ).

It may be that there is an intrinsic conflict between teaching apes language in the most effective way possible and doing so in a way that will satisfy the scientific scruples of the sceptics.

It is clearthat the ape language experiments have not convinced philosophers that at least some animals have language andtherefore thoughts.

However, one point is worth considering.

Even sceptics may admit that some apes havedemonstrated linguistic capacities to some degree or in some respect.

But a similar view with respect to havingthoughts is difficult to even understand.

Having a thought appears to be an all or nothing matter.

This may providesome evidence against the view that language and thought are as closely tied as some philosophers have claimed.4 Animal communication Even some scientists and philosophers friendly to the idea that animals have thoughts have been sceptical of the ape language experiments.

For these experiments have focused on very few individualsfrom an even smaller number of species.

They have been directed towards eliciting a variety of behaviours thatthese animals do not manifest under natural conditions.

In addition to the ape language experiments there havebeen other interesting studies of the communication abilities of other captive animals (see Bekoff and Jamieson1995 ; Ristau 1991 ).

Louis Herman has claimed that bottle-nosed dolphins are capable of semantic and syntactic processing that ‘utilize a rich network of mental representations when responding to language-mediated tasks',although they are less able to produce semantically and syntactically dense utterances.

Irene Pepperberg hastrained an African grey parrot to respond accurately to questions about the colour, shape, name and category of avariety of objects.

Under natural conditions many animals engage in highly sophisticated communicative activities.Cheney and Seyfarth have shown that vervet monkeys distinguish several different kinds of alarm call and behaveappropriately with respect to each.

Carolyn Ristau suggests that the broken wing displays in various species ofplovers may be intended to lead intruders away from their nests.

Deception has been claimed for a variety of. »