Non-Human Logic – Exploring Truth, Belief and Pragmatism

2.5.7 Non-Human Logic

It seems that any animal with a very complex behavioural repertoire must either have learned or innate ability to reason when presented with external stimuli. It has been hypothesized that changes in animal behaviour in multicellular organisms is controlled by the development and evolution of neural networks.

As neural networks evolved in structure and in function the types of processing that were possible became more diverse and more complex

Complex behaviour evolved a very long time before the appearance of humans or apes, since many vertebrates show sophisticated behaviours. In addition, it seems highly unlikely that human-style logic would have suddenly sprung into action with the evolution of homo sapiens, since we share much in common genetically with the apes such as bonobos. Nevertheless, humans seem to possess very complex symbolic communication as well as very complex tool-making and use not found in other species. Both of these processes clearly require complex rational thinking. In order to decide whether or not non-human animals can reason in particular ways it is worth examining the research that has been carried out on birds and apes.

Corvids

Humans are not alone in their ability to use tools. The incredible tool use behaviour of crows shown in 2 videos below also supports the idea that non-human species clearly use a kind of procedural logic. The reason why videos are used here is that observation (via video in this case) is ‘prior’ to theorising. What we individually conclude after making the observations will depend on our education and training, background knowledge, personal experience (such as with farm animals and pets or field study), openness to new ideas, any imaginative capacity that we individually possess, and of course our degree of gullibility. The traditional pontifications of philosophers about the limitations of non-human animal thinking have now been superseded by empirical enquiries that seek to inform a more grounded from of interpretation and theorising.

Observation and training of other non-human animals to suggest that they engage in causal reasoning and possess procedural logic requiring and at minimum working memory and memory and have “mental templates“.

Great Apes

Research studies on human-ape communication have been carried out with with 4 species of apes: bonobo (particularly one called Kanzi), chimpanzee (including one called Washoe and another named Nim Chimpsky), a western gorilla named Koko and an orangutan named Chantek. These studies were supposedly about the possibility of great apes communicating with language however it is seems more sensible to see them for what they were, experiments in interspecies communication that pushed the boundaries of what might be achievable given some inventive, but nevertheless unethical interventions.

These human-animal interactions suggest that other primates are capable of engaging in some form of aural and symbolic communication when interacting with humans or others of the same species. It is thus very tempting to think that animals appear to have behaviours that can be interpreted as being driven by forms of non-human rationality and possess some form of representational ability. This is, of course, is a bold claim made on the basis of little evidence. Herbert Terrace, who was himself involved in a long term primate study of Nim Chimpsky, is convinced that although primates can acquire and use symbols that represent English words they cannot develop linguistic fluency beyond using simple short string to communicate in a human-like fashion (see the interview below). Schoenemann( 2022) claims that the pairwise use of symbols shows a linguistically appropriate ‘word order’ that is nevertheless an important characteristic of language (Schoenemann, 2022).

Interestingly, Kanzi, the bonobo, was also successfully taught how to make and use stone tools (see reference below) an activity which, almost by definition, involves rationality. Equally remarkable is the sight of a wild orangutan using a human tool, a saw with a handle and also understanding that the piece of wood needs to be held to prevent movement.

In a very strict logical sense, it can be argued that other animal species possess an innate and/or learned sense about the way the world is, although not reaching anything like the complexity of human reasoning. Careful observation of animals and their behaviours more generally should leave us in no doubt that humanity is not alone in having anatomically and functionally complex brains and complex behaviours driven by reasoning.

Animals do not in any sense manifest an ability to analyse the structure of symbolic logic in the way that human logicians do. That of course does not preclude them from exhibiting many logically driven behaviour whether or not they are innate or learned. Even when behaviour is obviously learned it is likely that evolution has endowed us with the sort of control system that can undertake particular types of learning

Relevant Video

Herbert Terrace seems unimpressed by claims of linguistic competency in trained apes. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that there is clear evidence that apes are capable of symbolic communication.

“Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs” Or, in other words, they might have a theory of mind! When considering such ideas we should bear in mind the possibility of underdetermination of theory by available evidence.

Corvids

Further Reading