Apes with Language

SUE SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH, STUART SHANKER and TALBOT J. TAYLOR Apes with language When Aristotle argued that ‘Man is by nature a political animal’, or Seneca that ’Man is a reasoning animal’, the emphasis was very much on the idea that man is a part of the natural order - an animal, but an animal which is political and which reasons. These moral and cognitive capacities allow man to rise above the other animals. But given his innately bestial nature, man was seen as subject to the same sorts of instincts and drives as all the other species, and thus always in danger of relapsing to the level of the brutes. Western cosmology changed dramatically in 1637 when, in his Discourse on Method, Red Descartes attacked the Great Chain of Being: the doctrine that all of nature is organised in an unbroken series which progresses from plants through simple organisms and animals to man, and then beyond man to spiritual beings and ultimately God. Descartes argued that there is a hiatus between animals and man that cannot be filled by a ’missing link’. Animals, according to Descartes, are merely machines. The human body, he claimed, is also a machine; but it is a machine that is endowed with and governed by a mind. Hence man - by his ability to reason and reflect, to exercise moral choice, to direct the actions of his body, to be conscious of his mental states, to speak a language, and to live in a society - is categori- cally divorced from the animals. For Descartes, these cognitive, moral, social and linguistic abilities could not possibly be possessed by any non-human species. Moreover, since animals do not have minds, they could never even be brought to acquire language; for Cartesianism sees language as a means of transmitting thoughts from the mind of one agent to that of another. In turn, since they cannot acquire a language, animals are barred from developing the higher attributes of man. For, according to Cartesianism, all of the moral and social benefits which man enjoys are the direct result of the creation of language. Thus, Descartes‘s universe, unlike that of the Ancients, is bifur- cated. At its centre stands neither the Earth nor the Sun, but the mind of the human individual, responding to and literally constructing the world around it. Cartesianism has had a profound influence on the manner in which we view animals: namely, as creatures that are there to serve our interests and our needs. One can also argue that Cartesianism has played an instru- mental role in modern man’s increasing alienation from nature. But the 46 Critical Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3 issue that concerns us most here is the manner in which Cartesianism has shaped scientific attitudes towards the study of language and its relation to thought. If, as the Cartesian legacy would have it, language is an integral and unique part of the human birthright, then the study of animal behaviour, or for that matter, the study of nonverbal human behaviour, can shed no light on such questions as the nature of language, the origins of language, or the child's acquisition of language. But as soon as one entertains the possibility that there might be some continuity between animal communication, proto-linguistic activities and language 'proper', our perspective on the nature of language and its relation to thought must change dramatically. Prior to recent developments in Ape Language Research (ALR), Cartesian linguists and cognitive psychologists were able to maintain a dogmatic atti- tude towards the very possibility of such continuity. But the dramatic accomplishments in ALR over the past few decades - particularly work with the bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha - force the scientific community to reconsider. * Other considerations shape modern discussions of these issues. There is an emerging awareness of the close similarity between critical aspects of the behaviour of wild apes (including bonobos) and of ourselves. And we now know that apes are more closely related to humans than they are to monkeys in terms of the basic building blocks of the DNA code of life. Together these considerations force us to recognise that the Cartesian dichotomy framed by the words 'animal' and 'human' can no longer be accepted as valid. To be sure, old dichotomies die slowly. Cartesian-influenced scientists are not yet willing to accept the possibility of a genuine continuity between the human mind and that of the ape. These scientists are therefore led to maintain that, while there is no obvious neurological difference between human and ape, there must nonetheless be one. There must be some neurological difference that accounts for the taken-for-granted discontinuity between their mental abilities. Since it is not an obvious difference, well, then it must be a small difference: albeit one that has a large effect. This postulated neurological difference, although it has never been clearly identified in neural structure, has been referred to by various labels, the most common of which are 'grammar module' and, more recently, 'mindreading module'. Accordingly, while apes and humans both have been shown to have parietal lobes and amygdaloid complexes, nevertheless onty humans may be assumed to have the 'grammar' or 'mindreading' module which, according to Cartesianism, must be held to reside somewhere within these neural structures. On this view, all of the things which seem to set human beings apart Apes with language 47 from animals are assumed to be reducible to a single unique capacity: a capacity that finds the essence of its expression in what we call language. This capacity is presumed to undergird and make possible what we call ‘rational thought‘. It is apparently manifest in its clearest form in man’s possession of grammar and in his concept of number: that is, in man’s ability, as the Cartesian tradition would have it, to relate the structural components of abstract symbol systems to one another and to manipulate them according to rules. Thus the current, Cartesian view of animal-human relationships, en- lightened by science and freed from religious dogma, is that man is born with a sort of pure mathematical device inside his head. This device may be undetectable; but, the story goes, it must be something that permits humans to relate rules for organising symbols to real world events in certain specific ways. These ‘neurally embodied rules’ do not take up much space; nor, apparently, do they require any dramatic restructuring of the brain - so efficient is their encoding. The human child needs only a normal upbringing with exposure to the activities of others in order for this human endowment to flower. Animals, being devoid of language, lack this ’grammar’ or ’mindreading’ module. Therefore, lacking man’s analytical capacity, an animal’s learning is limited to being trained to perform complex chains of actions. Although these chains can become extremely elaborate, still animals, like plants, remain at the beck and call of stimuli generated by the environment. On this view, animals can never free themselves from their surroundings and contemplate the existence of self and nature, as can human beings. Thus, modern neuroscience has retained the Cartesian view that there exists a fundamental functional difference between the minds of humans and the minds of animals. By positing the existence of a bit of critical (though indistinguishable) neural tissue that is said to contain something akin to the alphabet of thought, neuroscience has managed to incorporate Descartes, Darwin, DNA and Goodall all into its cosmology: without alter- ing the central tenet which proclaims that man alone is capable of con- sciousness, rational thought, moral choice and language. But this view, mainstream as it is, is not a comfortable one, as can be seen from the steady rise in recent years of the animal rights issue. The problem, it seems, is that we humans can clearly see that many animals, and particularly mammals, are like ourselves in myriad ways. They appear to feel as we do when they are sad or hungry or tired or lonely or frightened or angry. They take steps that are wholly recognisable by us as ones that we ourselves might take to correct these circumstances. Many of them are as devoted to their young and their mates as we are; and many of them are as 48 Critical Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3 attached to their homes as we are. Some build complex shelters and modify objects to use as tools. Many are able to do things that we are unable to do because of limitations of our senses. And many animals appear to employ complex communication systems that we cannot decipher in any but the crudest fashion. Yet in spite of sensing all of these similarities between animals and ourselves, we wish to maintain that we are somehow different and superior. Why? To some extent the sad answer is that we find animals so useful for our way of life. They provide important sources of food, clothing, and labour. But in addition to the economic dependence of our species on animals, it is also important to recognise that all of the presuppositions that we have inherited about the nature of language, or rationality, or morality, simply preclude animals - u priori - from sharing in what we are led to regard as our uniquely human birthright. The fact that no animal speaks is surely the strongest buttress reinforcing this bifurcationist picture of the great divide between animals and humans. It allows and even encourages us to accept without challenge claims that animals lack both reason and souls. Deprived of the gift of tongues, animals are the ultimate disenfranchised group, and the economic welfare of humans is increased immeasurably because of the use of animals for food, clothing, and as human surrogates.

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