Apes, language and the human mind (original) (raw)
Related papers
From Primate Communication to Human Language: Anthropological & Philosophical Speculations
Anthropologia Integra, 2015
Spoken language has left no direct empirical traces in human evolution; the origin and early history of communication in humans has been left open for interpretation. Language provides a means for refl ection that is limitless in space and time, and it is a unique system that promotes endless creativity. In order for a proper analysis of language, researchers must fi nd universals shared by all forms of communication. Th rough the insights gained in decoding primate communication systems, this article covers those studies that have tested the potentialities of comprehension in the great apes. A set of events caused a shift from animal communication systems to human symbolic languages. In this anthropological and evolutionary context, early hominids utilized and developed ever-more complex language for adaptation and reproduction. KLÍČOVÁ SLOVA Komunikace; evoluce; řeč; tvorba nik; optimální strategie při získávání potravy; primáti; prajazyk ABSTRAKT Mluvená řeč nezanechává v lidské evoluci žádné přímé empiricky vysledovatelné stopy. Původ a raná historie lidské komunikace stále čekají na vědecký výklad. Řeč slouží jako nástroj myšlení, který není omezen časem a prostorem. Je to unikátní systém podporující nekonečnou lidskou kreativitu. Pro správnou analýzu jazyka musí vědci nalézt vztahy společné všem formám komunikace. Při přípravě tohoto příspěvku byly proto využity poznatky získané ze studia komunikačních systémů primátů, zejména lidoopů. Posun od systémů zvířecí komunikace k lidským symbolickým jazykům byl zapříčiněn celou řadou faktorů. Raní hominidé užívali a rozvíjeli stále komplexnější jazyk jako nástroj v rámci své adaptační a reprodukční strategie.
Philosophical reflections on a study of language in primates
The paper will consider the study of the language capacities of non-human creatures as exemplified in the work with bonobo reported in Par Segerdahl, William Fields and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi’s Primal Language: the cultural initiation of primates into language (Palgrave, 2005). The approach, which stands in sharp contrast with ‘objectifying’, scientific, research in this area, centrally involves the researchers’ living with, and talking with, the creatures studied. The paper will highlight the moral dimension of this approach; and, closely linked with that, the role of respect in the recognition of another as a speaker. The paper will also consider what might be the importance of this research, and the charge of ‘anthropocentrism’ that may be made against it.
Introduction to the Book Symposium on The Language Animal by Charles Taylor
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Review canadienne de philosophie, 2017
What it means to be a 'language animal' is a question Charles Taylor first addressed nearly 40 years ago in Language and Human Nature, 1 taking over the phrase from Georg Steiner. 2 The centrality of language for Taylor's thinking, and the longevity of his interest in the topic, is evident to all readers of his oeuvre. Taylor's attention to the subject appears in a variety of contexts and it is possible to discern four sources for his preoccupation with language. First, there is his contestation of behaviourism in The Explanation of Behaviour, in which he contends that a scientific language and the attempt to explain human behaviour in terms of science cannot address the problem "that our self-understanding essentially incorporates our seeing ourselves against a background of what I have called 'strong evaluation.'" 3 Second, there is his interest in the Romantic period, starting with the contextualization of Hegel's oeuvre in the post-Enlightenment and Romantic eras. He describes the romantic period as, essentially, based on the new view on language 4 developed by Johann
Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 2017
The paper is a discussion of Charles Taylor's recent book The Language Animal. The criticism of Taylor's view of language clusters around two main themes: fi rst, that he seems to "mysterianize" language somewhat, whereas the topics he addresses can be adequately dealt with within standard formal approaches in the philosophy of language and cognitive science; second, that his focus on language is in many cases misplaced, and should indeed be replaced with a focus on human conceptual structure, which language only fragmentarily expresses.
Ape Language Research has primarily focused on formal linguistic abilities of apes, rather than on the cultural and pragmatic aspects of language found in socio-communicative interactions. Studies with humans exhibiting non-standard language abilities, such as autistic children, have shown that the interlocutor play a constitutive role in enabling communication with these individuals. This contrasts with a general view in primatology that human influence may lead to unjustified anthropomorphism. Through an analysis of conversations between symbolically competent bonobos and humans using the concept of conversational implicature, it will be shown that the assumptions made by the interlocutor are crucial in establishing communicative intersubjectivity. The communicative exchange takes the form of a more distributed activity, a feature also exhibited by non-standard human language subjects.
The Language Animal: A Long Trajectory
In my paper, I set The Language Animal against a broader picture of Charles Taylor's intellectual trajectory. Sources of the Self (1989) left open three major questions: (a) the viability of religious moral sources in a 'secular' age; (b) the compatibility between a robust moral realism and a genealogical account of modern identity; and (c) the meaning and destiny of the so-called 'linguistic turn.' This is the framing topic of his last book. Although Taylor's variety of hermeneutics is unquestionably a product of the linguistic turn, he has operated with a broad notion of the linguistic capacity from the start. Language is, for him, a shared activity and the acknowledgment of its animal embeddedness functions in his work as an antidote against any too idealized a view of the kind of creatures that humans are. In his earlier writings, however, a structural tension lurked below the surface between a Gadamerian notion of Sprache and a more phenomenological, Merleau-Pontyan, embodied outlook that was less modelled on articulate speech. My claim is that his new book marks a shift from a more speech-oriented to a more body-oriented understanding of language. RÉSUMÉ : Dans mon article, j'analyse The Language Animal sur la base d'une considération plus large de la trajectoire intellectuelle de Taylor. Les sources du moi (1989) laissait trois grandes questions en suspens : (a) la pérennité des sources morales religieuses dans un âge «séculier»; (b) la compatibilité d'un réalisme moral robuste avec un récit généalogique de l'identité moderne; (c) le sens et le destin du soi-disant «tournant linguistique». Cette dernière question est devenue la question-clé de son plus récent livre. Bien que la variété de l'herméneutique taylorienne soit incontestablement le produit du tournant linguistique, Taylor a travaillé dès le début avec une conception large de la capacité linguistique. Le langage est pour lui une activité partagée et la reconnaissance de ses origines animales joue dans son travail un rôle d'antidote contre une vue trop idéalisée du type de créature que sont les humains. Dans ses premiers écrits, cependant, se dissimulait une tension structurelle entre une notion gadamerienne de Sprache et une perspective plus phénoménologique, liée à Merlau-Ponty et à la notion de parole incarnée, moins modelée sur la parole articulée. J'avance que ce nouveau livre de Taylor marque le passage d'une conception du language axée sur la parole à une conception davantage axée sur le corps.
Language and Communication, 2016
Ape Language Research has primarily focused on formal linguistic abilities of apes, rather than on the cultural and pragmatic aspects of language found in socio-communicative interactions. Studies with humans exhibiting non-standard language abilities, such as autistic children, have shown that the interlocutor play a constitutive role in enabling communication with these individuals. This contrasts with a general view in primatology that human influence may lead to unjustified anthropomorphism. Through an analysis of conversations between symbolically competent bonobos and humans using the concept of conversational implicature, it will be shown that the assumptions made by the interlocutor are crucial in establishing communicative intersubjectivity. The communicative exchange takes the form of a more distributed activity, a feature also exhibited by non-standard human language subjects.