Abstract
The relationship of humans to other primates – both in terms of abilities and evolution - has been an age-old topic of dispute in science. In this paper the claim is made that the different views of authors are based not so much on differences in empirical evidence, but on the ontological stances of the authors and the underlying ground narratives that they use. For comparing and reconciling the views presented by the representatives of, inter alia, cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, and zoosemiotics, an overarching approach of multi-constructivism is introduced. The paper proposes an analytic model (3C/GUTP) that distinguishes four logical possibilities in representing anthropological difference: Gradualism, Transformativism, Unitarism, and Pluralism. Using this typology, the views of C. Darwin, F. de Waal, M. Tomasello, and T. A. Sebeok regarding the similarities and differences between human and animal capacities for cognition, culture and communication (“3C”) are analyzed. The results indicate systematic differences in the selected narratives by these authors (e.g. Darwin – Gradualism, Tomasello - Transformativism) that can be related to the types of underlying ontologies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Narrativism is a term in the philosophy of science which highlights the discursive character and structure of scientific accounts. In some versions of narrativism, the interpretative role of individual researchers is also taken into account. Multi-constructivism is a biosemiotic approach devised for scientific or literary writings which occupies a middle-ground between realism and (social) constructivism. In the case of scientific writings about animals, multi-constructivism acknowledges several layers of semiotic (and interpretative) processes: animal, human researcher, and scientific tradition. Multi-constructivism is especially useful as a critical tool for the comparison of heterogeneous accounts of animal cognitive and semiotic faculties.
We are grateful to Helen Verran and Jaroslav Peregrin for their clarifications on this issue.
Note that a position acknowledging a superior character of some human faculties does not have to be linked to either anthropocentrism, speciesism, or human supremacism. In fact, any effort in animal conservation builds on human knowledge of the ecology and behavior of distinct species, and the character of this knowledge is highly theoretical: a possibility quite unique among living organisms. Also, in the current Catholic view of relations of humans to animals, namely in the encyclical Laudato si’, human superiority is interpreted as responsibility for the future of life on Earth. In the following, we use equality as a noun meaning “not having superior faculties.” This could either mean that the faculties of humans and animals are very similar (in case of evolutionary continuity), or so different that it is not sensible to make direct comparisons between them (in case of evolutionary discontinuity).
Even though the findings of Darwin are around 100 years older than those of the other three researchers, we have opted to include his works in the analysis. Our selection reflects the crucial importance of his evolutionary approach for any later reflections on human-animal relations. From more recent examples of Gradualism, see the work of Charles Hockett.
By mental faculties, Darwin understands imitation, attention, memory, imagination, reason, etc. Whereas even “the lowest savages” employ higher mental powers than apes, the sense of beauty can be superior in some bird species (Darwin 1871, 34, 64).
Since Tomasello links his theory to influential philosophers of collective intentionality, his way of relating shared intentionality to communication is problematic, since according to Searle, Bratman, or Gilbert, communicative activities are necessary for the very process of establishing joint mental states (cf. Schmid 2013; Koreň 2016; Carpenter and Liebal 2011).
In their recent article, Tomasello and Gonzales-Cabrera (2017) relate shared intentions also to cooperative breeding, which makes the plot of Tomasello‘s narrative of human evolution more convoluted.
This is also reflected in his attention to proximate rather than ultimate causes of behavior.
In the case of Sebeok, it can be questioned whether his reliance on the synchronic level of analysis allows for a qualification of his work as a narrative. However, we see a close resemblance between the composition of narratives and the way structurally central concepts – modelling, Umwelt, language – organize Sebeok’s writing. The proper relation between synchronic and diachronic levels of analysis would require an independent study.
De Waal (2016a) also uses an explanatory principle which is supplementary to evolutionary parsimony: Umwelt theory. In fact, this theory would provide him a strong case against any claim of the superior abilities of humans, but he applies it only to animals that are evolutionary distant and somewhat idiosyncratically claims that humans and primates “inhabit the same Umwelt” (de Waal 2016a: 11).
We thank an anonymous reviewer for the recommendation to discuss evaluations of ape-language projects in more detail.
If for a given case of anthropological difference there is homogeneity in the form of narratives employed by different researchers, it can signify that the forms of narratives are well-established by empirical events. This is even more likely if the researchers have come from various disciplines and worked in different time periods.
References
Allen, C. (2004). Is anyone a cognitive ethologist? Biology and Philosophy, 19, 589–607.
Allen-Hermanson, S. (2008). Insects and the problem of simple minds: Are bees natural zombies? The Journal of Philosophy, 105, 389–415.
Beran, M. J., Parrish, A. E., Perdue, B. M., & Washburn, D. A. (2014). Comparative cognition: Past, present, and future. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 27, 3–30.
Brentari, C. (2018). From the hiatus model to the diffuse discontinuities: A turning point in human-animal studies. Biosemiotics, 11, 331–345.
Buckner, C. (2013). Morgan’s canon, meet Hume’s dictum: Avoiding anthropofabulation in cross-species comparisons. Biology and Philosophy, 28, 853–871.
Call, J. (2009). Contrasting the social cognition of humans and nonhuman apes: The shared intentionality hypothesis. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1, 368–379.
Carpenter, M., & Call, J. (2013). How joint is the joint attention of apes and human infants? In J. Metcalfe & H. S. Terrace (Eds.), Agency and joint attention (pp. 49–61). New York: Oxford University Press.
Carpenter, M., & Liebal, K. (2011). Joint attention, communication, and knowing together in infancy. In A. Seemann (Ed.), Joint attention: New developments in psychology, philosophy of mind, and social neuroscience (pp. 159–181). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Cerrone, M. (2018). Umwelt and ape language experiments: On the role of iconicity in the human-ape pidgin language. Biosemiotics, 11, 41–63.
Currie, A. M. (2014). Narratives, mechanisms, and progress in historical science. Synthese, 191, 1163–1183.
Currie, A. M., & Sterelny, K. (2017). In defence of story-telling. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 62, 14–21.
Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray.
Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. London: John Murray.
de Waal, F. B. M. (1988). The communicative repertoire of captive bonobos (Pan paniscus), compared to that of chimpanzees. Behaviour, 106, 183–251.
de Waal, F. B. M. (1997). Bonobo: The forgotten ape. Berkeley: University of California Press.
de Waal, F. B. M. (1999a). Anthropomorphism and anthropodenial: Consistency in our thinking about humans and other animals. Philosophical Topics, 27, 255–280.
de Waal, F. B. M. (1999b). Cultural primatology comes of age. Nature, 399, 635–636.
de Waal, F. B. M. (2006). Primates and philosophers: How morality evolved. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
de Waal, F. B. M. (2008). Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 279–300.
de Waal, F. B. M. (2016a). Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? W.W. Norton & Company.
de Waal, F. B. M. (2016b). Apes know what others believe. Science, 354, 39–40.
de Waal, F. B. M., & Bonnie, K. E. (2009). In tune with others: The social side of primate culture. In K. Laland & B. G. Galef (Eds.), The question of animal culture (pp. 19–39). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
de Waal, F. B. M., & Ferrari, P. F. (2010). Towards a bottom-up perspective on animal and human cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14, 201–207.
de Waal, F. B. M., & Seres, M. (1997). Propagation of handclasp grooming among captive chimpanzees. American Journal of Primatology, 43, 339–346.
Dupré, J. (2002). Humans and other animals. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dupré, J. (2003). Human nature and the limits of science. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Galef, B. G. (1996). Social learning and imitation. In C. M. Heyes & B. G. Galef (Eds.), Social learning in animals: The roots of culture (pp. 3–15). San Diego: Academic Press.
Glock, H.-J. (2012). The anthropological difference: What can philosophers do to identify the differences between human and non-human animals? Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 70, 105–131.
Gould, S. J. (1995). “What is life?” as a problem in history. In M. P. Murphy & L. A. J. O’Neill (Eds.), What is life? The next fifty years (pp. 25–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grygar, F. (2017). Bohr’s complementarity framework in biosemiotics. Biosemiotics, 10, 33–55.
Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2005). Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 439–444.
Herrmann, E., Hernandez-Lloreda, M., Call, J., Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2010). The structure of individual differences in the cognitive abilities of children and chimpanzees. Psychological Science, 21, 102–110.
Horner, V., Bonnie, K. E., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2005). Identifying the motivations of chimpanzees: Culture and collaboration. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 704–705.
Horner, V., Proctor, D., Bonnie, K. E., Whiten, A., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2010). Prestige affects cultural learning in chimpanzees. PLoS One, 5, e10625.
Ingold, T. (1988). The animal in the study of humanity. In T. Ingold (Ed.), What is an animal? (pp. 84–99). London: Unwin Hyman.
Jaroš, F. (2016). Cats and human societies: A world of interspecific interaction and interpretation. Biosemiotics, 9, 287–306.
Jaroš, F. (2017). Darwin, Dawkins, and de Waal - animals like persons or machines? In M. Škorić & A. Kišjuhas (Eds.), Atheism and moral Progress (pp. 143–168). Novi Sad: University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philosophy.
Jaroš, F. (2018). Cat cultures and threefold modelling of human-animal interactions: On the example of Estonian cat shelters. Biosemiotics, 11, 365–386.
Koreň, L. (2016). Joint intentionality. From thin to thick. Journal of Social Ontology, 2, 75–85.
Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Landau, M. (1997). Human evolution as narrative. In L. P. Hinchman & S. K. Hinchman (Eds.), Memory, identity, community: The idea of narrative in the human sciences (pp. 104–118). New York: SUNY Press.
Leavens, D. A. (2011). Joint attention: Twelve myths. In A. Seemann (Ed.), Joint attention: New developments in psychology, philosophy of mind, and social neuroscience (pp. 43–72). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Leavens, D. A., Hopkins, W. D., & Bard, K. A. (1996). Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 110, 346–353.
Lestel, D. (2011). The biosemiotics and phylogenesis of culture. In T. Maran, D. Martinelli, & A. Turovski (Eds.), Readings in Zoosemiotics (pp. 377–409). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Maran, T. (2014). Biosemiotic criticism: Modelling the environment in literature. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 18, 297–311.
Maran, T. (2017). Mimicry and meaning: Structure and semiotics of biological mimicry. Springer.
Maran, T., Martinelli, D., & Turovski, A. (Eds.). (2011). Readings in Zoosemiotics. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Moll, H. (2016). Tension in the natural history of human thinking. Journal of Social Ontology, 2, 65–73.
Moll, H., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Cooperation and human cognition: The Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 362, 639–648.
O'Hara, R. (1992). Telling the tree: Narrative representation and the study of evolutionary history. Biology and Philosophy, 7, 135–160.
Pollick, A. S., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2007). Ape gestures and language evolution. PNAS, 104, 8184–8189.
Portmann, A. (1969). Biologische Fragmente zu einer Lehre vom Menschen. Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe & Company.
Richards, R. J. (1989). Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Darwinian evolutionary ethics: Between patriotism and sympathy. In P. Clayton & J. Schloss (Eds.), Evolutionary ethics: Biological and theological perspectives on human morality (pp. 50–73). Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Romanes, G. J. (1884). Mental evolution in animals. New York: AMS Press.
Rorty, R. (1990). Objectivity, relativism, and truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roth, P. A. (2017). Essentially narrative explanations. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 62, 42–50.
Scheler, M. (1928). Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. Darmstadt: Reichl.
Schmid, H. B. (2013). Shared intentionality and the origins of human communication. In A. Salice (Ed.), Intentionality (pp. 349–368). München: Philosophia.
Sebeok, T. A. (1963). Review. Language, 39, 448–466.
Sebeok, T. A. (1972). Perspectives in zoosemiotics. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sebeok, T. A. (1986). I think I am a verb: More contributions to the doctrine of signs. New York: Plenum Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (1990). Essays in zoosemiotics. Toronto: Victoria College in the University of Toronto.
Sebeok, T. A. (1991a). Communication. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), A sign is just a sign (pp. 22–35). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (1991b). Semiotics in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (2001a). Global semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (2001b). Signs: An introduction to semiotics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Smith, R. J. (2016). Explanations for adaptations, just-so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary Anthropology, 25, 276–287.
Sterelny, K. (2012). The evolved apprentice: How evolution made humans unique. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Suddendorf, T. (2013). The gap. The science of what separates us from other animals. New York: Basic Books.
Tomasello, M. (2008). The origins of human communication. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Tomasello, M. (2011). Human culture in evolutionary perspective. In M. Gelfand, C. Chiu, & Y. Hong (Eds.), Advances in culture and psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 5–51). New York: Oxford University Press.
Tomasello, M. (2014). A natural history of human thinking. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, M. (2016). Response to commentators. Journal of Social Ontology, 2, 117–123.
Tomasello, M., & Gonzales-Cabrera, I. (2017). The role of ontogeny in the evolution of human cooperation. Human Nature, 28, 274–288.
Tomasello, M., Savage-Rumbaugh, S., & Kruger, A. (1993). Imitative learning of actions on objects by children, chimpanzees and enculturated chimpanzees. Child Development, 64, 1688–1705.
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675–735.
Umiker-Sebeok, J., & Sebeok, T. A. (1980). Introduction: Questioning apes. In T. A. Sebeok & J. Umiker-Sebeok (Eds.), Speaking of apes: A critical anthology of two-way communication with man (pp. 1–59). New York: Plenum Press.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Andrew G. Christensen and Adéla Šrůtková for careful proofreading of the text. Further, we wish to thank Mark Risjord, Helen Verran, Martin Paleček, Jaroslav Peregrin, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The research for this article was supported by the joint Lead-Agency research grant between the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), Inferentialism and Collective Intentionality, GF17-33808 L, the Estonian Research Council (institutional research grant IUT02-44 and the individual research grant PUT1363 “Semiotics of multispecies environments: agencies, meaning making and communication conflicts”), and by European Regional Development Fund (Mobilitas Plus, MOBJD124).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jaroš, F., Maran, T. Humans on Top, Humans among the Other Animals: Narratives of Anthropological Difference. Biosemiotics 12, 381–403 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-019-09364-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-019-09364-w