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Mindreading Chimpanzees?

 

Mindreading Chimpanzees?

[email protected]

apes track beliefs

For a process to _track_ something is for how it unfolds to nonaccidentally depend, perhaps within a limited but useful range of circumstances, on facts about that thing.

(e.g. Krachun et al, 2009; Krupenye et al, 2017; Kano, Krupenye, Hirata, Tomonaga, & Call, 2019)

So for a process to track beliefs is for ...
I’ll often talk about an animal rather than a process tracking beliefs, for example, recent research indicates that apes can track others’ beliefs. *TODO* link to video!
For an animal to track beliefs is for there to be some process in the animal that tracks beliefs.
[don’t say: Once we have established that a given type of animal can track beliefs, two questions arise, which PROCESS and which MODEL?]
Why should we care whether apes can track beliefs (and other mental states)? Much of the interest in this question is driven by theory of mind ...
‘In saying that an individual has a theory of mind, we mean that the individual [can ascribe] mental states’
\citep[p.\ 515]{premack_does_1978}

Premack & Woodruff, 1978 p. 515

Have we answered Premack and Woodruff’s question? Some suggest that we have ...

apes track beliefs ∴ they are mindreaders ?

For the purposes of this talk, I am going to assume that we can make this inference, at least in some circumstances.
But I think there are two COMPLICATIONS which need to be addressed before we can be confident that we understand why we can make the inference. The first is simple: representing does not logically entail tracking ...

trackby representing

toxicity

odour

visibility

line-of-sight

belief

?

To say that someone tracks beliefs does not entail saying that she represents beliefs. In general, you can track something by representing something else.
Note that this complication is not supposed to show that we cannot make the inference from tracking to mindreading. After all, such inferences are not supposed to be deductive. Nor do I intend to suggest that we should somehow find a different inference which is deductive. Instead my point is simply this: as the inference is not deductive, there are bound to be tricky questions about how the observations support conclusions about tracking. [LATER: one further complication will be that there are multiple models of minds and actions.]
Two questions: > 1. How do observations about tracking support conclusions about representing? > 2. Why are there dissociations in nonhuman apes’, human infants’ and human adults’ performance on belief-tracking tasks?

Q1

How do observations about tracking support conclusions about representing models?

Q2

Why are there dissociations in nonhuman apes’, human infants’ and human adults’ performance on belief-tracking tasks?

To stress: this is a genuine question. The assumption is that you can infer representing from tracking. What we need, I think, is a clearer idea of how such inferences might succeed.
So my question is whether we should infer mindreading from tracking. I think there is a further COMPLICATION which should hold us back from making the inference without further scrutiny ...

second complication : dissociations in performance

‘the present evidence may constitute an implicit understanding of belief’

(Krupenye, Kano, Hirata, Call, & Tomasello, 2016, p. 113)

Krupenye et al, 2016 p. 113

studytypesuccess?
Call et al, 1999object choice (coop)fail
Krachun et al, 2009‘chimp chess’
(competitive, action)		fail
Krachun et al, 2009‘chimp chess’
(competitive, gaze)		pass A,
fail B
Krachun et al, 2010change of contentsfail
Krupenye et al, 2017anticipatory looking
(2 scenarios)		pass both
Commenting on their success in showing that great apes can track false beliefs, Krupenye et al comment that ...
Why do they say ‘implicit’?
I think it’s because they expect dissociations: just as there are dissociations among different measures of mindreading in adults, and developmental dissociations, so it is plausible that there will turn out to be dissociations concerning the tasks that adult humans and adult nonhumans can pass.
Indeed, we can see signs of dissociations if we go back to earlier work with great apes by Karla Krachun and colleagues ...
Invoking implicit cannot explain the dissociations because you could have just as well invoked implicit for a completely different pattern of findings.
Two questions: > 1. How do observations about tracking support conclusions about representing? > 2. Why are there dissociations in nonhuman apes’, human infants’ and human adults’ performance on belief-tracking tasks?

Q1

How do observations about tracking support conclusions about representing models?

Q2

Why are there dissociations in nonhuman apes’, human infants’ and human adults’ performance on belief-tracking tasks?

So now we have a second question to answer
We shouldn’t draw conclusions about mindreading from tracking before we can answer at least these two questions.
Our concern here is with the infants, but I hope the comparison with nonhumans can help us ...