http://www.thegreatonwardpress.com/9976/06/index23article3.html
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution based on natural selection challenged [the] classical dichotomy between “man and beast.” In the controversies that erupted, anecdotal examples of animal intelligence were used by Darwin and his followers to question the discontinuity between humans and other species….
Psychologists too were influenced by Darwin and espoused, in an even more radical form, the idea that fundamentally there is no difference between the psychology of humans and that of other animals. Drawing in particular on the work of Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov on conditioning, behaviorists developed the view that a single set of laws govern learning in all animals. Whereas naturalists insisted that animal psychology was richer and more human-like than was generally recognized, behaviorist psychologists insisted that human psychology was poorer and much more animal-like than we would like to believe. In this perspective, the psychology of cats, rats, and pigeons was worth studying in order, not to understand better these individual species, but to discover universal psychological laws that apply to humans as well, in particular laws of learning. Comparative psychology developed in this behavioristic tradition. It made significant contributions to the methodology of the experimental study of animal behavior, but it has come under heavy criticism for its neglect of what is now called ecological validity and for its narrow focus on quantitative rather than qualitative differences in performance across species. This lack of interest in natural ecologies or species-specific psychological adaptations, in fact, is profoundly anti-Darwinian.
For behaviorists, behavior is very much under the control of forces acting on the organism from without, such as external stimulations, as opposed to internal forces such as instincts. After 1940, biologically inspired students of animal behavior, under the influence of Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch, and Niko Tinbergen, and under the label of ethology, drew attention to the importance of instincts and species-specific “fixed action patterns.” In the ongoing debate on innate versus acquired components of behavior, they stressed the innate side in a way that stirred much controversy, especially when Lorenz, in his book On Aggression (1966), argued that humans have strong innate dispositions to aggressive behavior. More innovatively, ethologists made clear that instinct and learning are not to be thought of as antithetic forces: various learning processes (such as “imprinting” or birds’ learning of songs) are guided by an instinct to seek specific information in order to develop specific competencies.
By stressing the importance of species-specific psychological mechanisms, ethologists have shown every species (not just humans) to be, to some interesting extent, psychologically unique. This does not address the commonsense and philosophical interest (linked to the issue of the rights of animals) in the commonalties between human and other animals’ psyche. Do other animals think? How intelligent are they? Do they have conscious experiences? Under the influence of Donald Griffin, researchers in cognitive ethology have tried to answer these questions (typically in the positive) by studying animals, preferably in their natural environment, through observation complemented by experimentation. This has meant accepting some of what more laboratory-oriented psychologists disparagingly call “anecdotal evidence” and has led to methodological controversies.
Work on primate cognition has been of special importance for obvious reasons: nonhuman primates are humans’ closest relatives. The search for similarities between humans and other animals begins, quite appropriately, with apes and monkeys. Moreover, because these similarities are then linked to close phylogenetic relationships, they help situate human cognition in its evolutionary context. This phylogenetic approach has been popularized in works such as Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape…
Different species rely to different degrees and in diverse ways on their psychological capacities. Some types of behavior provide immediate evidence of highly specialized cognitive and motor abilities. Echolocotaion found in bats and in marine mammals is a striking example. A whole range of other examples of behavior based on specialized abilities is provided by various forms of animal communication.
Communicating animals use a great variety of behaviors (e.g., vocal sounds, electric discharges, “dances,” facial expressions) that rely on diverse sensory modalities, as signals conveying some informational content. These signals can be used altruistically to inform, or selfishly to manipulate. Emitting, receiving, and interpreting these signals rely on species-specific abilities. Only in the human case has it been suggested—in keeping with the notion of a radical dichotomy between humans and other animals—that the species’ general intelligence provides all the cognitive capacities needed for verbal communication. This view of human linguistic competence has been strongly challenged, under the influence of Noam Chomsky, by modern approaches to language acquisition.
Important aspects of animal psychology are manifested in social behavior. In many mammals and birds, for instance, animals recognize one another individually and have different types of interactions with different members of their group. These relationships are determined not only by the memory of past interactions, but also by kinship relations and hierarchical relationships within the group. All this presupposes the ability to discriminate individuals and, more abstractly, types of social relationships. In the case of primates, it has been hypothesized that their sophisticated cognitive processes are adaptations to their social rather than their natural environment. The Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis, so christened by Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten (1988), offers an explanation not only of primate intelligence, but also of their ability to enter into strategic interactions with one another, an ability hyperdeveloped in humans, of course.
— Dan Sperber, Lawrence Hirschfeld,
Culture, Cognition, and Evolution in
The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences,
Ed. Robert A. Wilson, Frank C. Keil
Filed under: natural philosophy
