Abstract
In this chapter I examine two claims that support the thesis that chimpanzees are substantive epistemic subjects. First, I defend the claim that chimpanzees are evidence gatherers (broadly construed to include the capacity to gather and use evidence). In the course of showing that this claim is probably true I will also show that, in being evidence gatherers, chimpanzees engage in a recognizable epistemic activity. Second, I defend the claim that chimpanzees achieve a degree of epistemic success while engaging in epistemic activity. Though this approach to chimpanzees can be extended to other nonhuman animals, I will restrict my discussion in this chapter to these nonhuman great apes.
Typically, humans qualify as substantive epistemic subjects. Again, typically, knowledge plays an integral role in intentional human behaviour. As a consequence of defending the claims that chimpanzees are evidence gatherers and achieve a degree of epistemic success while engaging in such epistemic activities, I will also have shown how knowledge plays an integral role in intentional chimpanzee behaviour.
The importance of these arguments does not wholly reside in the significance of knowledge explaining some chimpanzee behaviour. Treatments of nonhuman animal knowledge in the philosophical literature tend to go in one of two directions: They (i) embrace reliabilism and so construe nonhuman animal knowledge as reliably produced true beliefs (or, if not beliefs, the relevant analogue for non- or pre-linguistic animals), or (ii) embrace an anthropocentric stance that treats nonhuman animals as knowers only when they find themselves behaving in circumstances that, were it true of humans, would imply the presence of causally efficacious knowledge. What I offer is a corrective to both contemporary reliabilism and the anthropocentric stance in understanding chimpanzees as knowers in a philosophically significant sense. As we can defend the claim that chimpanzees possess an epistemic perspective, naturalized epistemologists should take greater care to provide universal analyses of knowledge (and perhaps positive epistemic status more generally) that accommodate the epistemic activities and implicit values through which chimpanzees achieve epistemic success.
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Notes
- 1.
In the discussion that follows I will adopt the locution ‘animals’ instead of the more cumbersome ‘nonhuman animals.’
- 2.
I think it is safe to interpret Gould and Gould as not requiring any accompanying phenomenal consciousness when ascribing active cognition, though I may be wrong here—see Gould and Gould (1994/99), p. 70.
- 3.
To avoid using the caveat “or, if not beliefs, the relevant analogue for non- or pre-linguistic animals” whenever I use ‘beliefs’ to describe a sub-class of mental states possessed by non-linguistic animals, I will use ‘beliefs*’ in what follows to refer to either beliefs or, where appropriate, their analogues for non- or pre-linguistic animals.
- 4.
Russell’s discussion of animal belief on pages 94-95, 99 of Russell (1948) is also relevant here.
- 5.
Kornblith uses some of Carolyn Ristau’s work on the piping plover to try and show the applicability of his account (2002: 53-55). However, it is clear from Ristau’s comments on the significance of her choice of cognitive vocabulary when explaining and describing the behaviour of her nonhuman animal subjects that (a) her subjects possess knowledge, and (b) it is reasonable to think this because they seem to be cognitively engaged with their environment. In other words, for Ristau, her subjects – understood as cognizers – are sufficiently sensitive and responsive to their environment to be, in some important sense, epistemic subjects (see Ristau 1991a: 93, 124; Ristau 1991b: 309-310).
- 6.
In using the word ‘non-linguistic’ it is not my intent to dismiss human language research using chimpanzees. Even given the successes in communicating with nonhuman great apes using symbol systems or American Sign Language, however, the majority of chimpanzees remain non-linguistic in that they lack a comprehension of, and ability to communicate using, a natural language or symbol system. Also, and more importantly, my account of being a substantive epistemic subject can be applied to animals who are even more clearly non-linguistic than chimpanzees. It is important, then, not to lose sight of my view that there are non-linguistic animals, chimpanzees among them, who can be appropriately regarded as substantive epistemic subjects.
- 7.
I am not suggesting that chimpanzee cognition compares with the developmental level of properly functioning human children. For example, it is obvious that many adult chimpanzees enjoy a degree of independence or self-sufficiency absent in many children. Rather, I wish to find examples among humans of behaviour and cognitive capacities that would not be regarded as ‘too sophisticated’ to be ascribed to chimpanzees.
- 8.
Nicholas Rescher is another epistemologist whose understanding of evidence gathering clearly requires metacognition (2001: 14-16, 19-20).
- 9.
Basically, epistemological internalism requires that justifiers for an epistemic subject’s belief are accessible to her and can be explicitly related by the epistemic subject in such a way as to ground the judgment that the belief is true or probably true (Steup 2003: 310).
- 10.
Steup, Bonjour and Audi are all properly regarded as epistemological internalists. The judgment that epistemological internalists are the more conservative of contemporary epistemologist is, of course, a comparative claim.
- 11.
In the philosophical literature, the sensitivity and responsiveness of animals to environmental feedback figures in contexts related to this one. See Allen (1999) concerning responsiveness to error; Kornblith (2004) concerning responsiveness to counterevidence; Saidel (1998) concerning responsiveness to a failure to achieve a goal.
- 12.
This is generally true of nonhuman primates (Strier 2000: 255-256, 263, 266-271).
- 13.
There are videos associated with Sanz et al. (2004) that can be viewed when accessing it through The American Naturalist online. Video 1, titled “Chimpanzees Approaching Nest”, appears to show a young chimpanzee copying the behaviour of his mother as she forages for termites (see http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/424803).
- 14.
- 15.
The implication of this study is that Loulis acquired these additional signs from his chimpanzee companions. Video recordings of these chimpanzees suggest that they use their knowledge of ASL in interactions with each other. They reliably use signs to initiate play (e.g., the sign for chase would reliably precede bouts of chasing behaviour), request objects or seek bodily contact (e.g., request grooming) (Fouts and Fouts 1999: 254; Fouts, Jensvold and Fouts 2002: 286-288).
- 16.
For a limited biography of Ai at the Primate Research Institute see http://www.pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ai/friends/indexE.html (accessed on May 8, 2010).
- 17.
Again see the videos associated with Sanz et al. (2004) which can be viewed when accessing it through The American Naturalist online.
- 18.
Members of the community in Bossou of which she was a part did crack open nuts, but only oil-palm nuts (Matsuzawa 1994/96: 364).
- 19.
The reader should not be misled by the play behaviour through which the aforementioned young chimpanzees develop their increasingly complex interaction with stones and nuts. Play can be an important way in which young animals acquire information and skills that are needed as they mature to adulthood (Manning and Dawkins 1998: 84-88). This is not to argue that play behaviour has this primary role, nor is such a primary role necessary for my discussion. The play of these chimpanzees, as described by experienced primatologists like Matsuzawa, clearly involves increasingly complex relations between the chimpanzee, nuts and stones. Allen and Bekoff provide an interesting discussion of the possible roles of play behaviour (Allen and Bekoff 1997: 108-112).
- 20.
This is risky behaviour (and the interpretation might elicit scepticism in my readers), but it is not uncommon. De Waal puts it this way: “Chimpanzees have a habit of putting their fingers or the back of one hand between the teeth of dominant group members. A friendly gesture, it is also a test of the dominant’s state of arousal and often is used in ambiguous situations. … [I]n the Arnhem colony I have seen quite a few instances when fingers were not treated … gently during appeasement attempts. Young chimpanzees of three years or less, who may have lacked the experience to judge whether the gesture was safe or not, were almost always the victims of … bites” (de Waal 1990/96: 80 [emphasis mine]). I have highlighted de Waal’s choice of words where they seem to enjoy epistemic significance.
- 21.
Coalitions are described as “two or more individuals joining forces against one or more conspecific rivals” (Nishida and Hosaka 1996: 114). Alliances are coalitions that survive for a lengthy period of time within a given community (though the amount of time required for a coalition to qualify as an alliance is, as far as I know, unspecified) (Nishida and Hosaka 1996: 114). Coalitions seem to be contrasted with alliances both because of their brevity of existence and opportunistic character (Nishida and Hosaka 1996: 114).
- 22.
Once again, these do not have to be consciously chosen nor do the ends need to be non-species specific or in some important sense idiosyncratic. That is to say, even ends that arise out of what an animal is predisposed to find salient will qualify as ends selected by this animal in the relevant way.
- 23.
Arguably something like this notion of skilled behaviour underlies James and Carol Gould’s discussions of learning and insight (see Gould and Gould 1999: 65-67, 68-87, 100-113).
- 24.
Note that I need no other learning mechanisms at work here than stimulus enhancement and instrumental learning. Even if these, and not more social learning, mechanisms best explain how the juveniles began to acquire the skills associated with cracking open coula nuts, they still acquired knowledge (or something akin to it) of the edibility of coula nuts similar to the knowledge (or something akin to it) possessed by Yo, and only learned of this property of coula nuts from observing Yo’s foraging behaviour.
- 25.
Call and Tomasello (2008) provide a brief but useful overview of available evidence that chimpanzees track the knowledge of conspecifics.
- 26.
I do not mean to imply that regarding chimpanzees as substantive epistemic subjects will take us far afield from epistemological reliabilsm. I would agree that knowledge, and positive epistemic status more generally (e.g., justified, rational or warranted belief [or their analogues for non- and pre-linguistic animals]), is intimately connected with reliably produced true belief (or its analogue for non- and pre-linguistic animals). As I suggest in this section, reliabilists must take greater care to provide epistemological analyses that accommodate and, in some important sense (and at some level of description), reflect the epistemic standards of all substantive epistemic subjects. This means working harder than we have to understand and then incorporate the epistemic activities and perspectives of animals like chimpanzees into universal analyses of knowledge (and positive status more generally).
- 27.
Up until now, with few exceptions, the epistemic activities and values informing the development and defence of analytic theories of positive epistemic status, or epistemic subjectivity, have been drawn from human behaviour (typically, the activities and values of mature, properly functioning, adult humans).This has tended to yield analyses of positive epistemic status or epistemic subjectivity that require sophisticated cognitive capacities (see Bonjour 2002; Rescher 2001; Steup 2003).
- 28.
As a form of epistemological externalism, reliabilist epistemology does not require that the justifiers which confer positive epistemic status are accessible to the relevant epistemic subject, nor that she be capable of understanding her belief’s justifiers as such. As, however, Goldman has rightly recognized, a to-be-specified sensitivity and responsiveness to defeaters (e.g., counter-evidence to a belief’s truth or probable truth) is required for epistemic success (see Goldman 1988).
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Fenton, A. (2012). Re-Conceiving Nonhuman Animal Knowledge Through Contemporary Primate Cognitive Studies. In: Plaisance, K., Reydon, T. (eds) Philosophy of Behavioral Biology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 282. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1951-4_6
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