Animal language and thought

« Animal language and thought The question of animal language and thought has been debated since ancient times.

Some have held that humans are exceptional in these respects, others that humans and animals are continuous with respect to language and thought.

The issue is important because our self-image as a species is at stake.

Arguments for human exceptionalism can be classified as Cartesian, Wittgensteinian and behaviourist.

What these arguments have in common is the view that language and thought are closely associated, and animals do not have language.

The ape language experiments of the 1960s and 1970s were especially important against this background: if apes could learn language then even the advocates of human exceptionalism would have to admit that they have thoughts.

It is now generally believed that whatever linguistic abilities apes have shown have been quite rudimentary.

Yet many sceptics are willing to grant that in some cases apes did develop linguistic skills to some extent, and clearly evidenced thought.

Studies of other animals in captivity and various animals in the wild have provided evidence of highly sophisticated communicative behaviour.

Cognitive ethology and comparative psychology have emerged as the fields that study animal thought.

While there are conceptual difficulties in grounding these fields, it appears plausible that many animals have thoughts and these can be scientifically investigated.

1 Human exceptionalism versus continuity across species Richard Sorabji (1993) has argued that debates about animal language and mind go to the core of the western philosophical tradition.

Aristotelians and Stoics argued that only humans have reason or belief; some Platonists and Pythagoreans argued that these are shared by many kinds of animal.

Indeed, Plato himself challenged the very framework presupposed by the debate. He thought that it was just as sensible to divide the world into cranes and non-cranes as humans and non-humans (see Statesman 263d).

Both human exceptionalism (HE) and continuity across species (CAS) have had strong supporters.

HE was defended by Aquinas, Descartes and many twentieth-century linguistic philosophers, CAS by Voltaire, Hume and Darwin.

Although it is easy to characterize HE and CAS generally, it is difficult to do so precisely. Roughly, those who espouse HE believe that humans are unique in having language and sophisticated thought, and that there is a deep chasm between these human capacities and whatever thoughts and communication systems other animals may have.

Those who embrace CAS hold that humans share the capacity for language or thought with at least some other animals and that the differences with respect to these capacities between humans and other animals are gradual and incremental.

However advocates of HE need not hold that humans are exceptional with respect to every capacity and every animal.

They may contemplate honorary humanhood for dolphins (for example), or grant that a few other animals have thoughts but insist that these thoughts are always first-order or nonconscious, and thus very different from the thoughts that humans are capable of having.

Defenders of HE may allow that many animals have communication systems, but then go on to claim that these are vastly weaker and less sophisticated than human language.

Supporters of CAS may grant that humans are capable of having some thoughts that no other animal can have.

But they will generally see this as an evolutionary fact about humans that is not importantly different from other evolutionary facts about other animals.

Perhaps only humans can ponder the neurophysiology of the wildebeest, but lions can think thoughts about wildebeests that humans cannot conceive. Defenders of CAS sometimes grant that only humans use language, but they often see this as a matter of definition or otherwise trivial.

They are inclined to see complex communication systems as similar to languages or as sophisticated and important.

Although the difference between HE and CAS may be vague, proponents of HE assert that there are enormous differences between humans and animals that centre on language and thought while advocates of CAS deny this.

The dispute between HE and CAS is important for several reasons.

If animals lack central features of language and thought that humans have, then a profound gulf separates us from them.

The existence of this gulf may have implications about the relations between the natural sciences and the human sciences.

It may also justify discontinuous moralities with respect to humans and animals (see Animals and ethics; Moral standing).

If HE is correct, then we may be justified in seeing ourselves as special - perhaps even as ‘the crown of creation'.

On the other hand, if CAS is correct, this may mean that action theory and philosophy of language should be seen as branches of ethology, and that our treatment of animals is a moral scandal.

We may have to give up the view of ourselves as morally and metaphysically privileged, and instead see ourselves as one animal species among many.

What is potentially at stake in arguments about animal language and thought is our human self-image - who we are, what we are like and what constitutes our proper relations with the rest of nature. 2 Arguments for human exceptionalism Many philosophers have defended HE.

Any attempt to collect these views into categories and to develop generic arguments involves regimentation.

With these caveats in mind, it is useful to divide the arguments for HE into three categories: Cartesian, Wittgensteinian and behaviourist.

Cartesian views about animal language and thought have been influential on philosophers and linguists such as Vendler (1972) and Chomsky (1966).

Although there is controversy about the exact nature of Descartes' views about animals, the broad outlines are clear.

Chomsky credits Descartes with recognizing that language use is ‘creative': it is both unbounded in scope and stimulus-free.

Descartes wrote that while ‘magpies and parrots are able to utter words just like ourselves' this is mechanical, ‘a movement of mere nature' rather than a sign of thought (Discourse on Method, 1637: Part V).

Having established to his satisfaction that animals do not have language, Descartes infers that they do not have thought, ‘for the word is the sole sign and the only certain mark of the presence of thought hidden and wrapped up in the body' (letter to Henry More, 1649).

Although Descartes is ambivalent about whether it can be proved that animals do not have thoughts, clearly he believes that they do not.

Since animals do not have thoughts they do not have ‘real feeling', for ‘real feeling' involves propositional content and animals are incapable of propositional content because they do not have language.

Wittgensteinian accounts of animal language and thought have been given by Malcolm (1972-3) and Leahy (1991).

Wittgenstein's own views are characteristically difficult to unravel.

In Philosophical Investigations (1953) he claims that animals ‘do not use language - if we except the most primitive form of language', but appears to think that animals have sensations, emotions, intentions and first-order beliefs.

However, Wittgenstein denies that animals have the power to simulate pain, to talk to themselves, or have attitudes about future events.

According to Malcolm, animals think but do not have thoughts. Having thoughts involves formulating and entertaining propositions, and he believes that animals are incapable of. »