Abstract
Povinelli and colleagues ask whether chimpanzees can understand the concept of weight, answering with a resounding “no”. They justify their answer by appeal to over thirty previously unpublished experiments. I here evaluate in detail Povinelli’s arguments against his targets, questioning the assumption that such comparative questions will be resolved with an unequivocal “yes” or “no”.
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Notes
Information obtained from private communication with Martin Baum, the book’s editor at OUP.
A response is that the color cues were adequate for predicting success on the earlier task, so there would have been no reason for the chimpanzees to adopt a strategy that sorted by weight rather than by color.
I am grateful to Josep Call, who originally raised these worries in private communication.
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Buckner, C. In search of balance: a review of Povinelli’s world without weight . Biol Philos 28, 145–152 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9352-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9352-0