From the "Nothing Special" Files -- Apes and Their Theory of Mind
This is just in from the laboratories of Nothing Special that I wrote about here the other day. Reports Karen Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times, "[H]umans' thinking abilities aren't quite as special as we'd like to think" (emphasis added). She knows that because of a new study in Science, "Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs."
Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, only humans were given credit for being able to ascertain the unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others. (Of course, said credit was doled out by humans.) ...
Ask yourself: Why the sarcastic tone? She goes on:
A notable version of this skill is the ability to recognize when someone else believes something that's false....
A team led by evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye at Duke University and comparative psychologist Fumihiro Kano of Kyoto University chose 41 chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. The researchers showed the apes a series of videos starring a regular person and a man dressed up as King Kong. In a variety of scenarios, King Kong would try to hide a rock-like object from the person. If the person saw what was going on, he'd find the rock in the expected place. If not, he didn't.
To test whether the apes understood what was going on, the scientists showed them additional videos in which King Kong tried to hide in one of two haystacks. Sometimes the person saw where King Kong went, and sometimes he didn't. Using an infrared eye-tracker, the researchers could see where the apes were looking -- and thus, where they expected the human to go.
In a second experiment, the apes watched more videos of King Kong trying to hide a rock from the person. Again, the researchers used eye-trackers to see if the apes could anticipate what the person would do.
In both cases, the chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans correctly anticipated the person's actions -- even when the person looked for King Kong or the rock in the wrong place.
The moral, of course, is that humans are Nothing Special:
Thanks to these results, the claim that only humans can ascertain the mental states of others "is starting to wobble," primatologist Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University wrote in a commentary that accompanies the study....
De Waal seconded that notion, saying the results highlight "the mental continuity between great apes and humans."
It's a useful reminder that humans shouldn't be so quick to put themselves on a pedestal, he added.
The paper in Science is only a little more restrained in drawing the same lesson:
We humans tend to believe that our cognitive skills are unique, not only in degree, but also in kind. The more closely we look at other species, however, the clearer it becomes that the difference is one of degree. Krupenye et al. show that three different species of apes are able to anticipate that others may have mistaken beliefs about a situation.... The apes appear to understand that individuals have different perceptions about the world, thus overturning the human-only paradigm of the theory of mind.
Yet the business about knocking us down from a pedestal is based on a false premise: that we are at all surprised by these results. I'm not. Given that canines with their high emotional intelligence clearly intuit "unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others," as anybody with experience with dogs knows, why would the same not be true of apes?
That we share a limited capacity like this with chimps and orangutans comes as no shock. Therefore nothing is "starting to wobble." The results of the research do little to span the chasm between chimp and man. Instead the Nothing Special crowd uses the "pedestal" as a setup, a momentary fiction useful only for being immediately knocked over.
As Wesley Smith reminds us, dumping dirt on human exceptionalism is a preoccupation of popular science journalism -- not to mention professional science. It goes to show how powerful the will is among many smart and otherwise thoughtful people to believe humans are nothing special, and to convince others of the same thing. Where does that power come from?
An email correspondent notes the irony:
I have never been able to understand why so many people want so badly to believe there is Nothing Special about us, but they do. Only thing I can figure is that some of them just feel saying this makes them look special in the eyes of others.
Yes, right. Status is the key, but the psychology is very strange. Obviously I understand polishing your sense of self by advertising your accomplishments, associations, and possessions. But what drives this weird dynamic where feeling special depends on obsessively disclaiming specialness? We all know people who take pride in their humility. This is different. It seems to be more about sticking it -- "Nothing Special" -- in the face of others. That is the whole point of the L.A. Times article.
I am stumped. If you have any insights, please drop me an email and let me know. (Hit the orange button at the top of the page.)
David Klinghoffer
This is just in from the laboratories of Nothing Special that I wrote about here the other day. Reports Karen Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times, "[H]umans' thinking abilities aren't quite as special as we'd like to think" (emphasis added). She knows that because of a new study in Science, "Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs."
Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, only humans were given credit for being able to ascertain the unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others. (Of course, said credit was doled out by humans.) ...
Ask yourself: Why the sarcastic tone? She goes on:
A notable version of this skill is the ability to recognize when someone else believes something that's false....
A team led by evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye at Duke University and comparative psychologist Fumihiro Kano of Kyoto University chose 41 chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. The researchers showed the apes a series of videos starring a regular person and a man dressed up as King Kong. In a variety of scenarios, King Kong would try to hide a rock-like object from the person. If the person saw what was going on, he'd find the rock in the expected place. If not, he didn't.
To test whether the apes understood what was going on, the scientists showed them additional videos in which King Kong tried to hide in one of two haystacks. Sometimes the person saw where King Kong went, and sometimes he didn't. Using an infrared eye-tracker, the researchers could see where the apes were looking -- and thus, where they expected the human to go.
In a second experiment, the apes watched more videos of King Kong trying to hide a rock from the person. Again, the researchers used eye-trackers to see if the apes could anticipate what the person would do.
In both cases, the chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans correctly anticipated the person's actions -- even when the person looked for King Kong or the rock in the wrong place.
The moral, of course, is that humans are Nothing Special:
Thanks to these results, the claim that only humans can ascertain the mental states of others "is starting to wobble," primatologist Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University wrote in a commentary that accompanies the study....
De Waal seconded that notion, saying the results highlight "the mental continuity between great apes and humans."
It's a useful reminder that humans shouldn't be so quick to put themselves on a pedestal, he added.
The paper in Science is only a little more restrained in drawing the same lesson:
We humans tend to believe that our cognitive skills are unique, not only in degree, but also in kind. The more closely we look at other species, however, the clearer it becomes that the difference is one of degree. Krupenye et al. show that three different species of apes are able to anticipate that others may have mistaken beliefs about a situation.... The apes appear to understand that individuals have different perceptions about the world, thus overturning the human-only paradigm of the theory of mind.
Yet the business about knocking us down from a pedestal is based on a false premise: that we are at all surprised by these results. I'm not. Given that canines with their high emotional intelligence clearly intuit "unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others," as anybody with experience with dogs knows, why would the same not be true of apes?
That we share a limited capacity like this with chimps and orangutans comes as no shock. Therefore nothing is "starting to wobble." The results of the research do little to span the chasm between chimp and man. Instead the Nothing Special crowd uses the "pedestal" as a setup, a momentary fiction useful only for being immediately knocked over.
As Wesley Smith reminds us, dumping dirt on human exceptionalism is a preoccupation of popular science journalism -- not to mention professional science. It goes to show how powerful the will is among many smart and otherwise thoughtful people to believe humans are nothing special, and to convince others of the same thing. Where does that power come from?
An email correspondent notes the irony:
I have never been able to understand why so many people want so badly to believe there is Nothing Special about us, but they do. Only thing I can figure is that some of them just feel saying this makes them look special in the eyes of others.
Yes, right. Status is the key, but the psychology is very strange. Obviously I understand polishing your sense of self by advertising your accomplishments, associations, and possessions. But what drives this weird dynamic where feeling special depends on obsessively disclaiming specialness? We all know people who take pride in their humility. This is different. It seems to be more about sticking it -- "Nothing Special" -- in the face of others. That is the whole point of the L.A. Times article.
I am stumped. If you have any insights, please drop me an email and let me know. (Hit the orange button at the top of the page.)
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