The article analyzes the neural and functional grounding of language skills as well as their emergence in hominid evolution, hypothesizing stages leading from abilities known to exist in monkeys and apes and presumed to exist in our hominid ancestors right through to modern spoken and signed languages. The starting point is the observation that both premotor area F5 in monkeys and Broca's area in humans contain a “mirror system” active for both execution and observation of manual actions, and (...) that F5 and Broca's area are homologous brain regions. This grounded the mirror system hypothesis of Rizzolatti and Arbib (1998) which offers the mirror system for grasping as a key neural “missing link” between the abilities of our nonhuman ancestors of 20 million years ago and modern human language, with manual gestures rather than a system for vocal communication providing the initial seed for this evolutionary process. The present article, however, goes “beyond the mirror” to offer hypotheses on evolutionary changes within and outside the mirror systems which may have occurred to equip Homo sapiens with a language-ready brain. Crucial to the early stages of this progression is the mirror system for grasping and its extension to permit imitation. Imitation is seen as evolving via a so-called simple system such as that found in chimpanzees (which allows imitation of complex “object-oriented” sequences but only as the result of extensive practice) to a so-called complex system found in humans (which allows rapid imitation even of complex sequences, under appropriate conditions) which supports pantomime. This is hypothesized to have provided the substrate for the development of protosign, a combinatorially open repertoire of manual gestures, which then provides the scaffolding for the emergence of protospeech (which thus owes little to nonhuman vocalizations), with protosign and protospeech then developing in an expanding spiral. It is argued that these stages involve biological evolution of both brain and body. By contrast, it is argued that the progression from protosign and protospeech to languages with full-blown syntax and compositional semantics was a historical phenomenon in the development of Homo sapiens, involving few if any further biological changes. Key Words: gestures; hominids; language evolution; mirror system; neurolinguistics; primates; protolanguage; sign language; speech; vocalization. (shrink)

"This reviewer had to be restrained from stopping people in the street to urge them to read it: They would learn something of the way science is done,...

We develop a formal semantic analysis of the alarm calls used by Campbell’s monkeys in the Tai forest and on Tiwai island —two sites that differ in the main predators that the monkeys are exposed to. Building on data discussed in Ouattara et al. :e7808, 2009a; PNAS 106: 22026–22031, 2009b and Arnold et al., we argue that on both sites alarm calls include the roots krak and hok, which can optionally be affixed with -oo, a kind of attenuating (...) suffix; in addition, sentences can start with boom boom, which indicates that the context is not one of predation. In line with Arnold et al., we show that the meaning of the roots is not quite the same in Tai and on Tiwai: krak often functions as a leopard alarm call in Tai, but as a general alarm call on Tiwai. We develop models based on a compositional semantics in which concatenation is interpreted as conjunction, roots have lexical meanings, -oo is an attenuating suffix, and an all-purpose alarm parameter is raised with each individual call. The first model accounts for the difference between Tai and Tiwai by way of different lexical entries for krak. The second model gives the same underspecified entry to krak in both locations, but it makes use of a competition mechanism akin to scalar implicatures. In Tai, strengthening yields a meaning equivalent to non-aerial dangerous predator and turns out to single out leopards. On Tiwai, strengthening yields a nearly contradictory meaning due to the absence of ground predators, and only the unstrengthened meaning is used. (shrink)

The brain sciences are providing new means of investigating brain processes involved in decision making. However, understanding decision making at the computational level requires methods unsuitable for use in humans. This chapter argues that monkeys are attractive models of human decision making and that neurophysiological recordings in monkeys can provide insight into human decision processes. The chapter explores a number of objections to the relevance of monkey data to understanding human decision making, including the importance of language and (...) consciousness, and argues that none undermines the applicability of the model, though some may limit it. The relevance of studies of decision in monkeys to questions of free will is discussed. (shrink)

Recent work in judgment and decision-making has shown that a good’s price can have irrational effects on people’s preferences. People tend to prefer goods that cost more money and assume that such expensive goods will be more effective, even in cases where the price of the good is itself arbitrary. Although much work has documented the existence of these pricing effects, unfortunately little work has addressed where these price effects come from in the first place. Here we use a comparative (...) approach to distinguish between different accounts of this bias and to explore the origins of these effects. Specifically, we test whether brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) are also susceptible to pricing effects within the context of an experimentally trained token economy. Using a capuchin population previously trained in a token market, we explored whether monkeys used price as an indicator of value across four experiments. Although monkeys demonstrated an understanding of which goods had which prices (consistently shifting preferences to cheaper goods when prices were increased), we observed no evidence that such price information affected their valuation of different kinds of goods. These results suggest that human price effects may involve more sophisticated human-unique cognitive capacities, such as an understanding of market forces and signaling. (shrink)

The use of monkeys in research represents a particular area of controversy. The chapter offers a critique of arguments typically offered in public debate. I note the weaknesses of retrospective thinking, the erroneous appeal to necessity, and the unfounded bias against working with human volunteers and rodents. The issues are illustrated via three scientific paradigms for which there exist valid alternatives: the development of a neural control system for robotic arm movement, the study of perceptual decision-making, and the study (...) of the cognitive mechanisms underlying cocaine addiction and relapse. The three paradigms allow us to reflect on the opportunity cost neglect by individual researchers. Compromised by a conflict of interest, some researchers put forth misguided claims insisting on the irreplaceability of their preferred animal model. (shrink)

In Japan, yaen kōen or "wild monkey parks" are popular visitor attractions that show free-ranging monkey troops to the paying public. Unlike zoos, which display nonhuman animals through confinement, monkey parks control the movements of the monkeys through provisioning. The parks project an image of themselves as "natural zoos," claiming to practice a more authentic form of displaying animals-in-the-wild than that practiced by the zoo. This article critically evaluates the monkey park's claim by examining park management of the (...) class='Hi'>monkeys. The article shows the monkey park's claim to display wild monkeys to be questionable because of the way that provisioning changes monkey behavior. Against the background of human encroachment onto the forest habitat of the monkey, the long-term effect of provisioning is to sedentarize nomadic monkey animals and to turn the wild monkey park into a megazoo. (shrink)

This essay explores references to monkeys as a way of talking about imitation, authenticity, and identity in Greek stories about the “Monkey Island” Pithekoussai and in Athenian insults, and in Plautus' comedy. In early Greek contexts, monkey business defines what it means to be aristocratic and authoritative. Classical Athenians use monkeys to think about what it means to be authentically Athenian: monkey business is a figure for behavior which threatens democratic culture—sycophancy or other deceptions of the people. Plautus' (...) monkey imagery across the corpus of his plays moves beyond the Athenian use of “monkey” as a term of abuse and uses the “imitative” relation of monkeys to men as a metapoetic figure for invention and play-making. For Plautus, imitator—and distorter—of Greek plays, monkeys' distorted imitations of men are mapped not onto the relations between inauthentic and authentic citizens, as in Athens, but onto the relation of Roman to Greek comedy and culture at large. Monkey business in Plautus is part of the insistence on difference which was always crucial in Roman encounters with Greek culture. (shrink)

Research with nonhuman primates is essential to medical progress and will still be necessary for the foreseeable future. Almost all research scientists agree that animal research is critical to understanding basic biology, discovering new treatments for human (and animal) diseases, and maximizing the safety of new medicines while minimizing their harm to humans. All but two of the Nobel prizes in medicine awarded over the last one hundred years have depended on animal research, and the list of modern medicines, vaccines, (...) and other treatments, as well as basic science discoveries, is so extensive that it could not be adequately covered in even a huge volume. Increases in average life span in the last century are the result of improved public health measures, and many diseases may be related to lifestyle choices. But animal research has contributed to understanding these factors and to the development of vaccines and lifesaving treatments. The philosophical debate regarding the benefits and moral costs of animal research has also filled many volumes by ethicists and philosophers. The major arguments against the use of animals in medical research have been explicitly refuted by a few brave scientists, as well as implicitly by the vast majority of the working biomedical science community. My contribution to this discussion is to provide a personal perspective on my decision if, when, and how to use monkeys in research experiments on Parkinson disease. As a physician researcher, I have been working for many years to understand and cure Parkinson disease. (shrink)

Stoerig and Cowey’s work is widely regarded as showing that monkeys with lesions in the primary visual cortex have blindsight. However, Mole and Kelly persuasively argue that the experimental results are compatible with an alternative hypothesis positing only a deficit in attention and perceptual working memory. I describe a revised procedure which can distinguish these hypotheses, and offer reasons for thinking that the blindsight hypothesis provides a superior explanation. The study of blindsight might contribute towards a general investigation into (...) animal consciousness, though there is a problem when it comes to showing how a non-verbal animal can indicate whether or not it is perceiving consciously. Perhaps whether there is something that it is like to be a given animal depends on whether it exhibits the cognitive profile of conscious vision as opposed to non-conscious “natural blindsight.”. (shrink)

The scandal of the human: immanent transcendency and the question of animal language -- Sovereign silence: the desire for answering speech -- The gravity of melancholia: a critique of speculative realism -- Listing toward cosmocracy: the limits of hospitality.

The chapter discusses the following quotation from Charles Peirce: "One of these days, perhaps, there will come a writer of opinions less humdrum than those of Dr. (Alfred Russel) Wallace, and less in awe of the learned and official world...who will argue, like a new Bernard Mandeville, that man is but a degenerate monkey, with a paranoic talent for self-satisfaction, no matter what scrapes he may get himself into, calling them 'civilization,' and who, in place of the unerring instincts of (...) other races, has an unhappy faculty for occupying himself with words and abstractions, and for going wrong in a hundred ways before he is driven, willy-nilly, into the right one. Dr. Wallace would condemn such an extravagant paradoxer." Charles Peirce, 1901 -/- . (shrink)

There have been several recent attempts to refute objective consequentialism on the grounds that it implies the absurd conclusion that even the best of us act wrongly. Some have argued that we act wrongly from time to time; others have argued that we act wrongly regularly. Here I seek to strengthen reductio arguments against objective consequentialism by showing that objective consequentialism implies that we almost never act rightly. I show that no matter what you do, there is almost certainly something (...) else you could do that would have even better consequences. If objective consequentialism is true, the ratio of the number of your right actions to the number of your wrong actions is very close to zero. (shrink)

Abstract. A rhesus monkey, Helen, from whom the striate cortex was almost totally removed, was studied intensively over a period of 8 years. During this time she regained an effective, though limited, degree of visually guided behaviour. The evidence suggests that while Helen suffered a permanent loss of `focal vision she retained (initially unexpressed) the capacity for `ambient vision.

In recent decades, a novel theoretical account of folk psychology has emerged that challenges traditional assumptions: mental fictionalism. Rather than treating mental states as things in creatures’ minds that we are really tracking, mental fictionalists argue that folk psychology is best understood as a collective fiction that we partake in. On this account, it is this fiction rather than an ability to track mental states that enables us to predict/explain one another’s behavior, or to coordinate our affective states to grow (...) and maintain social relationships. I provide an overview of the evidence from comparative and developmental psychology that is inconsistent with mental fictionalism, arguing that both views considered here are unable to account for the mindreading abilities of non-linguistic primates and children. I then offer an ontogenetic challenge, arguing that mental fictionalism faces the difficult task of explaining how mindreading could emerge from what are thought to be more sophisticated cognitive mechanisms, such as those underlying participation in either pretense or collective narratives. I conclude by highlighting the specific body of evidence that a more robust version of mental fictionalism should account for, especially as it continues to be refined and emerges as a serious competitor amongst interpretations of folk psychology. (shrink)

This research examines how and why reactions to other consumers’ unethical behavior differ among consumers and vary in different situations. Drawing on construal level theory, the authors propose that the relationship between other consumers’ unethical behavior and focal consumers’ unethical behavior is moderated by focal consumers’ construal level, and self-expressiveness mediates this moderating effect. Specifically, consumers at higher construal levels tend to view their behavior as more self-expressive and are thus less likely to imitate other consumers’ unethical behavior. Study 1 (...) indicates that focal consumers who have a chronic tendency to construe information at high levels are less likely to replicate other consumers’ unethical behavior than those who have a chronic tendency to construe information at low levels. Studies 2, 3a and 3b show that when primed with higher-level construals, consumers are less likely to follow other consumers’ unethical behavior than when primed with lower-level construals. The mediating effect of self-expressiveness was tested and supported in Study 1 and Study 3b. These findings help to better understand consumers’ reactions to other consumers’ unethical behavior. (shrink)

Is language designed for communicative and functional efficiency? G. K. Zipf famously argued that shorter words are more frequent because they are easier to use, thereby resulting in the statistical law that bears his name. Yet, G. A. Miller showed that even a monkey randomly typing at a keyboard, and intermittently striking the space bar, would generate “words” with similar statistical properties. Recent quantitative analyses of human language lexicons (Piantadosi et al., 2012) have revived Zipf's functionalist hypothesis. Ambiguous words tend (...) to be short, frequent, and easy to articulate in language production. Such statistical findings are commonly interpreted as evidence for pressure for efficiency, as the context of language use often provides cues to overcome lexical ambiguity. In this study, we update Miller's monkey thought experiment to incorporate empirically motivated phonological and semantic constraints on the creation of words. We claim that the appearance of communicative efficiency is a spandrel (Gould & Lewontin, 1979), as lexicons formed without the context of language use or reference to communication or efficiency exhibit comparable statistical properties. Furthermore, the updated monkey model provides a good fit for the growth trajectory of English as recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. Focusing on the history of English words since 1900, we show that lexicons resulting from the monkey model provide a better embodiment of communicative efficiency than the actual lexicon of English. We conclude by arguing for the need to go beyond correlational statistics and to seek direct evidence for the mechanisms that underlie principles of language design. (shrink)

Penn et al. argue that the complexity of relational learning is beyond animals. We discuss a model that demonstrates relational learning need not involve complex processes. Novel stimuli are compared to previous experiences stored in memory. As learning shifts attention from featural to relational cues, the comparison process becomes more analogical in nature, successfully accounting for performance across species and development.

Virtue ethics has generated a great deal of excitement among ethicists largely because it is seen as an alternative to the traditional theories – utilitarianism and Kantian ethics – which have come under considerable scrutiny and criticism in the past 30 years. Rather than give up the enterprise of doing moral theory altogether, as some have suggested, others have opted to develop an alternative that would hopefully avoid the shortcomings of both utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Several writers, such as Jorge (...) Garcia and Michael Slote, have tried to develop this alternative of virtue ethics, or at least sketch out ways such a theory could be developed. (shrink)

Monkeys and apes, inhabiting variable environments and subjected to K-selection, exhibit cultural behavior transmitted horizontally and vertically, like cetaceans. Behaviors enhancing better health and nutrition, predator avoidance, or mate selection, can affect differential reproduction.Furthermore, dominance hierarchies and social status not only affect the transmission and acceptance of new behaviors but they may also affect genetic inheritance.

This essay is a Neo-Aristotelian critique of Frans de Waal’s evolutionary moral sentimentalism. For a sentimentalist, moral judgments are rooted in reactive attitudes such as empathy, and De Waal argues that higher primates have the capacity for empathy—they can read other agent’s minds and react appropriately. De Waal concludes that the building blocks of human morality—primarily empathy—are present in primate social behavior. I will engage de Waal from within the sentimentalist tradition itself broadly construed and the Aristotelian virtue tradition more (...) specifically. Within an Aristotelian framework, emotion regulation is necessary for moral responsibility. Aristotle understands that emotions are evaluative perceptions with cognitive content, and non-human animals do not possess the cognitive capacities for emotion regulation and are thus not morally responsible. This marks a boundary between primate behavior and human morality. (shrink)

Debates over moral machines are often guilty of making wide assumptions about the nature of future autonomous entities, and frequently bypass the distinction between ‘agents’ and ‘actors’ to the detriment of their conclusions. The scope and limits of moral status are fundamentally linked to this distinction. We position non-_Homo sapiens_ great apes as members of a particular moral status clade, which are treated in a similar fashion to that proposed for so-called ‘moral machines’. The principles by which we ultimately decide (...) to treat great apes, and whether or not we decide to act upon our responsibilities to them as moral agents, are likely to be the same principles we use to decide our responsibilities to moral AI in the future. (shrink)

An elementary exercise in symbolizing an existential to universal relation reveals expressive limitations in standard first-order predicate-quantificational logic. Alternative translations of a sample some-every sentence are considered and rejected after criticism, leaving as the best choice a particular structure that demonstrably does not serve for all predicates available to the ordinary language to which the sample sentence belongs. We explain the difficulties encountered in trying to arrive at an adequate translation of the sentence in classical logic, as background to examining (...) five alternative nonclassical logics to resolve the problem. We settle finally if only provisionally in the process on a version of intensional logic that permits reference and true predication of constitutive properties to nonexistent as well as existent objects. (shrink)

In this article, I try to build a series of reflections based on the conference “I am a monster who speaks to you”, given by Paul B. Preciado during the International Conference of the School of the Freudian Cause in Paris, in November 2019. To this end, I seek to understand the meaning of monstrosity in the body and discourse of Preciado, “a trans man, a non-binary body”, in the light of Foucauldian reflections on monstrosity and abnormality.

Laboratory Animal Science came to radically alter the conditions experienced by animals used in biomedical research during the twentieth century. Historians have attributed the emergence of the field to a reevaluation of laboratory animals as beings worthy of care within Western culture. Drawing on the emerging field of “critical logistics,” this article reevaluates this assumption in relation to a rapid increase in demand for rhesus macaques for use in poliomyelitis vaccine production during the 1950s. Thinking through the emergence of laboratory (...) animal care standards in relation to the creation of a global monkey supply chain operating out of India shows how early biomedical logistics relied on, reaffirmed, and contributed to the reconstitution of colonially rooted racial and economic disparities. In securing and regularizing flows of monkeys from northern-central Indian forests, early laboratory animal scientists adapted colonial governance strategies to a postcolonial context. Far from simply implementing animal care concerns, they relied on and negotiated with a broad range of animal trade participants, including historically marginalized groups. Thinking through the specificities of these interactions shows how both care standards and the contention that animal supply and production should be subject to scientific rationalization helped birth new logistical forms of global power. (shrink)

To what degree has biology influenced and shaped the development of moral systems? One way to determine the extent to which human moral systems might be the product of natural selection is to explore behaviour in other species that is analogous and perhaps homologous to our own. Many non-human primates, for example, have similar methods to humans for resolving, managing, and preventing conflicts of interests within their groups. Such methods, which include reciprocity and food sharing, reconciliation, consolation, conflict intervention, and (...) mediation, are the very building blocks of moral systems in that they are based on and facilitate cohesion among individuals and reflect a concerted effort by community members to find shared solutions to social conflict. Furthermore, these methods of resource distribution and conflict resolution often require or make use of capacities for empathy, sympathy, and sometimes even community concern. Non-human primates in societies in which such mechanisms are present may not be exactly moral beings, but they do show signs of a sense of social regularity that—just like the norms and rules underlying human moral conduct—promotes a mutually satisfactory modus vivendi. (shrink)