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. From a pragmatic perspective it further seems highly unlikely that any animal endowed with complex behaviours, or conscious awareness of self or the environment, would survive for long or reproduce if it had a dysfunction form of logical processing. Complex behaviour in vertebrates must have 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 with the apes such as bonobos. Nevertheless, humans seem to possess very complex linguistic 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 can reason 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 The traditional pontifications of philosophers about the limitations of non-human animal thinking have now been superseded by empirical enquiries that seek to inform a more grounded from of interpretation and theorising.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 to some researches that they engage in causal reasoning and possess procedural logic 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 inventive, but nevertheless unethical interventions.

These human-animal interactions suggest that other primates are capable of engaging in some form of 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. These are of course bold claims made on the basis of little evidence and have been severely criticised. Herbert Terrace, who was himself involved in a long term primate study of Nim Chimpsky, is convinced that animals cannot use language ( i.e. words or symbols, and grammar) to communicate in a human like fashion (see the interview below). That is really not the point at issue here.

There is a danger that this kind of interaction could be over interpreted

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.

Corvids

Further Reading