Synopses & Reviews
Current primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child.
Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language.
Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive and developmental psychology.
Table of Contents
Part I. Entry into Language 1. Bringing up Kanzi
Kanzi: The Ape Who Crossed the Line
Would A Bonobo Learn Language?
Mother and Child
Kanzi Had Been Keeping a Secret
Morning Exploits
Travels in the Forest
Evening Tours
Living with Kanzi
Theory of Mind
Syntax Grasped
What Kanzi Tells Us
Part II. Theoretical and Philosophical Implications
2. Philosophical Preconceptions
The Cartesian Revolution
Praedicet Ergo Est: It Predicts Therefore It Is
The Cartesian Mind as "Folk" Theorist
Cartesian Bifurcation versus Mechanist Continuity
Becoming a Person
The "Charm" of the Theory of Mind Thesis
The Cartesian Hierarchy of Psychological Concepts
The Ascent of Pan
"The Constitutional Uncertainty of the Mental"
3. Rhetorical Inclinations
"Sure, But Does He Really Understand What We Say?"
Evaluating Metalinguistic Claims: Logical Prerequisites
The Commonsense Picture of Communication
Animal Research and the Scarlet Letter
The Epistemological Conception and Its Methodological Legacy
Methodological Reductivism
Methodological Operationalism
Metalanguage as Cultural Technique
4. Beyond Speciesism
Apes Have