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Great apes appear to have “theory of mind”
- pmiller2 7y agoI recognize the value in doing these experiments, but is anyone surprised? I would have been far more surprised if our closest relatives could not demonstrate a theory of mind.
- tim333 7y agoI don't think it's surprising with chimps given the stuff we know about them. See for example Chimpanzee Politics https://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes-ebook/dp/B004HYFO3S https://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes-...
- __MatrixMan__ 7y agoI totally agree. I have noticed that the implicit skepticism for the faculties of animals that you're picking up on is not just present in this research, but seems to represent the attitudes of psychologists and philosophers generally--or at least it does in my university. Every time it came up in one of my classes (I'm thinking of three: epistemology, learning and cognition, and philosophy of language) there was always somebody around ready to act authoritative on the matter and squash the idea that animals are more capable than we think they are. On two separate occasions, elsewhere on campus, I found conversations among students in those classes but not majoring in either philosophy or psychology (like myself) where there was unanimous agreement that those disciplines have a stick up their ass about the subject. Maybe I should accept that they're more familiar with the research in this area than I am, and therefore probably just correct, but I'm inclined to suspect a more particular bias. Like maybe certain influential folk in the recent past tried to make an academic stand for the specialness of humans (if there's a place for such a stand, it's in philosophy or psychology) and their work only travels in certain circles, which makes the cliques stand out to us muggles. I've found academic discourse to be quirky like that.
- mfoy_ 7y agoIt wasn't that long ago that people seriously debated whether animals were actually conscious or not.
- pmiller2 7y agoOh, I know that. By all means, run the experiments and do the tests. I’m just saying the results here are entirely unsurprising given we’re talking about animals that are effectively 99.5% the same as us at a genetic level.
- pks016 7y agoThat's the animal research and psychology research. You won't know until you have done. And it's the starting point of testing something more complicated.
- xvector 7y agoMultiple hominid species on Earth have had a technology gap on an unfathomable timescale. Indeed, the Denisovans developed stone tools tens of thousands of years before our own species. We often look to the stars and wonder what other intelligent life is out there. I'm sure it's captured every one of our minds at some point. Dark Forest theory of the Fermi Paradox be damned, we want to share in the comfort of knowing that intelligent life exists. That we are not all alone. But I wonder - had things been not much different, might we be cohabiting with an intelligent species, one perhaps tens of thousands of years ahead of us? Aliens on our own planet? Would we even realize their sentience - would our minds even be comparable? Would their civilization fade to ruins before we came to sentience, and would we discover remnants of a long-lost civilization? Would they raze the planet to the ground and never provide us the opportunity to develop sentience? So many questions. Are we in a similar situation right now with other hominids, who we've found to have a "theory of mind"? Are we morally obligated to not cut the nip of societal development in the bud for these species? And if this species suffers in developing and advancing, are we obligated to ease and accelerate their development? For example, if a far advanced civilization was out there, merely observing us while they knew they had the cure to our dying loved ones and general suffering on this planet, would we not find the only ethical solution to provide said cure? As such, are we in a similar situation with other developing hominids? When you think about it, it is possible that intelligent life developing on other planets is not a singular species but multiple species. And that's fascinating. I wonder what it must be like, to cohabit with a different species that is effectively your equal with respect to self-awareness/sentience, even if they are not your equal with respect to technology.
- The_rationalist 7y agoIn many cases I guess one genocide the other specie. They represent too much of an existential threat before both of those species reach rationality and altruism as constitutional finalities.
- coldtea 7y ago>Are we morally obligated to not cut the nip of societal development in the bud for these species? That's a question that is more of a decision. The universe doesn't care either way, and wouldn't care if tomorrow a comet extinguished life on Earth entirely.
- devoply 7y agoWe need to genetically engineer all apes and monkeys towards human levels of intelligence. It's their only hope for survival and a great hope to change our politics for the better incorporating more of nature into our civilizations.
- coldtea 7y agoSounds more like their only hope for becoming slaves in a dystopian future human society...
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoIt's interesting to think that, perhaps, racism millions of years ago is why we even have distinct ape species.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoDavid Brin's Uplift saga is essentially about that. Highly recommended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe
- jeswin 7y ago>For example, if a far advanced civilization was out there, merely observing us while they knew they had the cure to our dying loved ones and general suffering on this planet, would we not find the only ethical solution to provide said cure? When we slaughter other animals by the millions (often in very painful ways) though it can be avoided, are we in a position to ask such questions? We're basically a cruel species lacking empathy.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoYes and I hope some day that practice goes the way of common human slavery. Perhaps some day we will stop killing our fellow earth creatures. For now we still kill even other humans at will.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoI think one could make a good argument that in fact, humans are the species with the most empathy, out of all other species. The very idea of one species caring for another, which many humans do, seems completely unique in the animal kingdom. I would say the rest of the natural world is very ruthless. Humans have empathy for other species, nothing else in nature seems to.
- bsdz 7y agoI think there are a few counter examples. Many pet owners have posted videos of their dogs and cats being protective of their (human) babies. In fact, Koko the gorilla was very affectionate towards her kittens.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoSure, but those situations probably wouldn't arise without human guidance.
- bsdz 7y agoPerhaps for those situations I mentioned one could argue that human guidance had a hand. However, there many other examples of cross species altruism where humans play no role (other than observational).
- known 7y agoAll humans learn in fundamentally similar ways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles
- epaga 7y agoNot sure what you're trying to say with this. Does this belong to a different thread? Also, note that "learning styles" has come into some intense criticism re: its validity as of late. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Criticism
- bfung 7y agoInconclusive.(?) It's like saying - there's a trained neural net with inputs: opacity of screen = 1 with expected output of searching target box. When tested, similar neural nets with similar training expected output of target box. Hence neural net has "theory of mind" It'd be way more conclusive if the apes knew what was going on, and then decided to act to change the outcome.
- yqx 7y ago> It's like saying - there's a trained neural net with input It's not. There's a world of difference between a neural net and a chimpanzee. Chimpanzees are some our closest evolutionary relatives. They are living animals with whom we share a great deal of our DNA (98.8% seems to be an often quoted figure). Therefore, conclusions that are likely given the observation "neural net shows similar behavior to humans" are vastly different those given the observation "Chimpanzee shows similar behavior to humans".
- dfgdsgds 7y agoWe share 90% of our DNA with cats. 99.9% with other humans. DNA sharing is a measure whose dynamic range is blown. That's like saying there is a 99.9% chance to survive the end of the year vs a 99% chance. Vastly different! We share 99.9 % of our DNA with any other human being. Chimps are 12X more different than we are to ourselves - and how different we are!
- mannykannot 7y agoYour thought experiment is not equivalent to that described here as it does not have a similar complexity of interaction between actors -- in fact, it has no interaction between actors. Your use of neural nets is also something of a red herring: you would have just as good a counter-example with two passive devices giving the same output on the same inputs.
- not_a_moth 7y agoI recommend Carl Safina's "Beyond Words", which is an in-depth look at elephants, wolves, and orcas, and I recommend the audio book form, because he rants, with sincere anger, about how obvious it is that these animals display theory of mind.
- WalterBright 7y agoI hope this means we'll treat them better.
- mieseratte 7y agoConsidering how man treats fellow man, I wouldn't get hopes up.
- _-___________-_ 7y agoThe first sentence of the article: Scientists can’t agree on how the intelligence of our primate relatives, but [...] What does this even mean? Is editing just not done any more? Something like this as the _first sentence_ of an article make me doubt the quality of the entire article, in fact the entire publication.
- caymanjim 7y agoI certainly can't agree on how the intelligence of our article author.
- eyeundersand 7y agoSpot on. That the publication didn't find it worthwhile to accurately proofread the FIRST sentence of the article signals (to me) they are not worried about the reader's time and prevents me from taking their article seriously.
- WhompingWindows 7y agoCopy-editing is just another wasteful business expense to be cut for increased profits. Journalism is profit-centric and copy-editors have been cut from the NYTimes, too.
- Fa1c0n 7y agoFor sure, apes are very intelligent. I've seen a few clips where orphaned apes have recognised humans years after they last met. I've also seen a case where an orangutang was spotted using a 'spear' to catch fish.
- jffhn 7y agoI heard a scientist telling about one of his colleagues that was showing towels of different colors to an ape, to see how the ape could point to an image or word (don't remember) corresponding to its color. At some point he presented him with a blue towel, and the ape kept pointing at "red". After a few retries from the scientist, the ape pointed to the little red tag of the towel, and went laughing.
- shakna 7y ago> After decades of research, it remains controversial whether any nonhuman species possess a theory of mind. It should be important to note that whilst this result isn't particularly surprising, there is one giant glaring issue that can undercut this paper. They define theory of mind based on past definitions and research, and base their methodology on methods that have arisen that seem to fit-for-purpose to those definitions. Which would usually be fine. However, during the Replication Crisis, basically everything to do with theory of mind was dashed to pieces. (Worth pointing out that more than 1/3 of psychological research was found to be un-replicatable.) One of the main components of "theory of mind", "embodied cognition" was particularly badly hit by the crisis. So whilst this paper may be unsurprising, it rests on the laurels of stuff that has turned out to be nothing more than a polished turd, making the result questionable until such time as psychology has managed to recover the massive amount of ground lost.
- nbeleski 7y agoWould you kindly expand on the issues with ToM and embodied cognition that were affected by the Replication Crisis? You mention a main component that was badly hit, what would that be? Thanks in advance!
- shakna 7y agoAll of psychology was hit by the Replication Crisis. 1 in 3 papers have results that are unable to be replicated. In any field that'd have seriously wide-reaching implications, but in psychology where so much relies on foundational theories like ToM it is extremely significant. This impact was worsened by the fact that so few psychological researchers choose to attempt to replicate results, due in part by the fact that doing so isn't incentivized by the industry. Embodied cognition basically has not a single paper able to be replicated [0], so it's out the window. This isn't to say that ToM is a flawed theory - in general, it's conclusion is probably true. Rather, psychology has some terrible, terrible, mainstream practices - things like outlier elimination and p-value rounding basically make it impossible to replicate a study unless the original author is involved. But _assuming_, without evidence to the contrary, that the theory is still sound is denying the problem exists. Thankfully there is some research [6] attempting to show where the world is at with regards to this particular theory. The study the article is about uses the fairly typical false-belief task. We've been using versions of it since '83, so it should be solid. Except it might not work at all when a person has autism [1], and as autistic people generally are aware of others and that others can differ in thought, the task may be flawed or our understanding flawed. Or maybe autism really does mean you lack something that fundamental [+]. There are other inconsistencies with it. [7] The false-photograph task was developed in part because of the apparent limitations of the false-belief task. Unfortunately, Woodward's results haven't yet been replicated, just relied upon. Before the crisis hit home, the research was leaning towards people with autism being ToM deficient, but replications don't show statically sound results that say it conclusively or not, thanks to p-value rounding, whilst some more recent research suggests we simply aren't measuring it correctly, and those results may be caused by the coping mechanisms employed. [2][5] Which, if true, suggests that the false-belief task may not actually be stimulating the right parts of any individual's mind, but rather just engaging them in something visually intensive. A lot of our measurements of ToM, such as when using fMRIs, have been called into question, as they might just be falsely noticing the spatial orientation that happens during visual stimulus. [3] But again, there isn't enough replication to say definitively one way or t'other. There's also some lesser issues. Some of the strongest ToM research suggests that the origin lies in mirror neurons [4], but the animals studied in the article of this thread don't have them, and animals possibly having ToM is extremely inflammatory within the broader psychological community. If you want someone to try and replicate your study, suggest that a particular animal has ToM. There's about a 50/50 success rate, which is not really encouraging. Hopefully that's a little bit to chew on. As I've said, ToM probably does work. But we don't currently have the statistics to say it does. [0] https://qz.com/1525854/psychologys-replication-crisis-is-debunking-embodied-cognition-theory/ https://qz.com/1525854/psychologys-replication-crisis-is-deb... [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0010027785900228?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0010027785... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1611 https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1611 [3] https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1073858407304654 https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1073858407304654 [4] https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS1364-6613%2898%2901262-5 https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS1364-6613%2898%2901262-5 [5] https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.neuroimage.2011.02.067 https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.neuroimage.2011.02.067 [6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352340917306121 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235234091... [7] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797612447819 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976124478... [+] I'm not the right person to judge this. I have autism. Which, if the ToM theories are correct, means I lack the perspective to tell whether or not I have a ToM deficit.
- ajuc 7y agoMy parents had 2 dogs. The smarter one understood that when she buried some bones while the other dog watched - she later reburied it somewhere else when the other dog was at home. She also knew not to go into the living room while father was there (because she was technically forbidden to do that), but went to that room when father was away. I'm pretty sure she had some kind of theory of mind.
- marci 7y agoMaybe the other one had an undetected handicap (?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTGdWZ-X7B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTGdWZ-X7B0
- weregiraffe 7y agoGreat apes think alike.
- fallingfrog 7y agoWell I mean technically “great apes” includes humans..