Exorcising Grice's ghost: an empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals (original) (raw)
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The question of whether nonhuman animals participate in intentional communication has become central in the comparative research on animal communication: How can intentional communication be determined; what framework or which criteria should be applied in order to do so? Current research has focused on the signaller displaying intentional behaviour (Townsend et al. 2016) mostly by applying the features of the concept of intentional signals (Call & Tomasello 2007; Liebal et al. 2014). However, a drawback of these methodologies is that they introduce false positives: for instance, the criteria applied fail to exclude instances in which the recipient merely takes into account external evidence to decide how to react after signal production. Here, we will show that current empirical evidence may pick out a signaller’s informative and communicative intention, and a recipient’s ability to understand the signal’s meaning linked to the signaller’s intentions, only if researchers adopt a Neo-gricean definition of intentional communication that views communication as fundamentally inferential. However, we will argue that adopting such an approach happens mainly for reasons of methodological access to intentional communication in animals and does not exclude calling out to non-inferential accounts of communication such as the one developed by Millikan (2005). Based on Millikan’s insight that signallers and recipients always constitute together a communicative interaction, we illustrate here with two examples of animal communication in apes (Cartmill & Byrne 2007) and corvids, (Pika & Bugnyar 2011) and two systematic approaches (Hobaiter & Byrne 2014; Rossano 2013) how the Neo-gricean framework can be enriched by focusing on the notion of flexible interaction between signallers and recipients to analyze animal communication.
Ostensive intentional communication in nonhuman animals
2018
By interacting with each other communicatively humans constantly engage in so-called intentional communication. Intentional communication means to engage in meaningful communication, i.e. communicating meaningful messages to others by communicating goals, information etc. with the help of signals that carry meaning themselves. Humans engage in such intentional communication openly, that is we do not simply use language to transmit a message, but we also address each other directly by employing eye-contact and other so-called ostensive signals to emphasize our motivation to communicate something to a specific audience. Human communicators are not just naturally good at displaying these back-and-forth interactions, but they are also very efficient in doing so. One reason for this efficiency is our conventionalized communication system: human language. Using a word with a fixed meaning in a sentence to deliver a certain message then is easing the workload of signalers and recipients grasping each other’s intentions directly or indirectly, and makes communication indeed more efficient. Given this, intentional communication appears at least at first glance to be uniquely human. But is it uniquely human indeed? What about the communicative interactions of nonhuman animals? They clearly do not have a conventional language system. But can they influence each other’s mental state in a communicative situation and do they intend to do so? If yes, by what means? In this dissertation, I aim to provide a framework, that is a set of criteria derived from theoretical and empirical research on human and nonhuman communication, which is aimed at picking out a sophisticated, human-like intentional communication: a kind of intentional communication that is cognitively related human communication, and in particular to ostension. The criteria will be based, first on the central idea of flexibility to be perceivable within a communicative interaction, both in recipients and signalers. Secondly, ostensive signals, it will be argued, function even in human communication as attention-getters and -directors, and do not require higher level cognition.
Animal communication in linguistic & cognitive perspective
2022
Detailed comparative studies have revealed many surface similarities between linguistic communication and the communication of non-humans. How should we interpret these discoveries in linguistic and cognitive perspective? We review the literature with a specific focus on analogy (similar features and function but not shared ancestry) and homology (shared ancestry). We conclude that combinatorial features of animal communication are analogous but not homologous to natural language. Homologies are found instead in cognitive capacities of attention manipulation, which are enriched in humans, making possible many distinctive forms of communication, including language use. We hence present a new, graded taxonomy of means of attention manipulation, including a new class we call ‘Ladyginian’, which is related to but slightly broader than the more familiar class of ‘Gricean’ interaction. Only in the latter do actors have the goal to reveal specifically informative intentions. Great ape inte...
Primate communication: Affective, intentional, or both?
Heesen R., Sievers C, Gruber T., Clay, Z. (in press). Primate communication: Affective, intentional, or both? In B. L. Schwartz & M. J. Beran (Eds.), Primate Cognitive Studies. Cambridge University Press., 2021
The intentional communication of affective states is a central part of human sociality and cognition. Although nonhuman primates (henceforth primates) also signal intentionally, there is a perceived chasm between their intentional versus affective forms of communication. Whereas primate vocalizations and facial expressions are traditionally viewed as involuntary 'read-outs' of affective states, gestures are considered as products of intentional control. However, this traditional view is increasingly contentious, given recent evidence of intentional signal production of primate vocalizations and facial expressions, as well as the general void of arousal-based explanations in gesture research. In this chapter, we challenge the perceived dichotomy between affective and intentional communication in primates and propose a dimensional approach, whereby primate signals can be both affective and intentional, regardless of signal modality (tactile, audible, visible) or component (gesture, facial expression, vocalization). We argue that a dimensional approach, which incorporates both affective and intentional components, would improve our knowledge on how affective and cognitive processes have jointly shaped the evolution of primate communication.