Abstract
Povinelli’s Problem is a well-known methodological problem confronting those researching nonhuman primate cognition. In this paper I add a new wrinkle to this problem. The wrinkle concerns introspection, i.e., the ability to detect one’s own mental states. I argue that introspection either creates a new obstacle to solving Povinelli’s Problem, or creates a slightly different, but closely related, problem. I apply these arguments to Robert Lurz and Carla Krachun’s (Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2: 449–481, 2011) recent attempt at solving Povinelli’s Problem.
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Notes
More precisely, the problem covers any non-verbal primate (human or non-human). In what follows, though, I’ll focus on nonhuman primates, usually dropping the ‘nonhuman’ qualification: ‘primates’ and ‘animals’ will refer to nonhuman primates and nonhuman animals, respectively.
Importantly, the notion of an ‘unobstructed line of gaze’, or something like it, can be spelled out in non-mental terms. That is, a non-mindreader can observe that another has an unobstructed line of gaze towards an object. Lurz (2009, p 309) does a nice job of explaining this point. I will discuss his explanation later on in section 5.2.
A different problem claims that no experimental protocol can rule out every plausible behavior-reading hypothesis (minimal or complementary). Lurz (2009, p 306) claims that no experimental protocol can control for every plausible behavior-reading hypothesis, and so would seem to find this problem both unsolvable and uninteresting. Unfortunately, he does not defend this claim there. While I accept that controlling for every behavior-reading hypothesis is impossible, I do not see why controlling for every plausible behavior-reading hypothesis is impossible. Nevertheless, I will be concerned in this paper only with the problem described in the main text.
Lurz and Krachun (2011), when describing Povinelli’s Problem, write that “since mental state attribution by animals must be based on observable features of an agent’s behavior and environment – for the minds of others are not open to direct inspection – every mindreading hypothesis has a complementary behavior-reading hypothesis” (453, my emphasis). They say nothing about introspective bases of mental state attributions.
Lycan (1996), Nichols and Stich (2003), Goldman (2006), and Lurz and Krachun (2011) are examples of researchers who deny that these capacities are really just a single capacity. On the other hand, Peter Carruthers has recently argued that introspection is simply mindreading oneself (although this is an oversimplification of his position). In his 2009, he argues that this capacity evolved, first and foremost, for mindreading others. But once in place, we began to use it on ourselves. This is the sense in which, for Carruthers, mindreading is evolutionarily prior to introspection/metacognition. See also his 2010 and 2011.
On Option 1, this means that they should be concerned with overcoming the complication that introspection introduces to solving Povinelli’s Problem; on Option 2, this means they should be concerned with solving Povinelli’s ProblemI.
In what follows, all references to Lurz and Krachun are to their 2011.
Here, they appeal to Millikan (2004) who characterizes such states as being “perceptions on the one hand and directives on the other” (158–159). Millikan calls such mental representations ‘pushmi-pullyu’ states. Also, ‘internal goals’ are contrasted with ‘external goals’, only the former of which are psychological. Lurz and Krachun claim that an internal goal is a “particular type of motivational or conative state in an agent”, while an external goal is an “external object or state of affairs that an agent’s action is understood to be directed at or expected to bring about” (452). The ability to mindread is not required in order to represent another agent’s external goals.
Both Lurz and Krachun have recently defended the ARM theory: see Krachun (2008), Krachun et al. (2010), and Lurz (2011a, b). They also note that Humphrey (1976) and Gallup (1982) offer early defenses of the theory. Their mindreading hypothesis, although motivated by the ARM theory, is nevertheless independent of that theory; one can endorse their hypothesis while denying the ARM theory.
Two differences are worth noting. First, opaque coverings are not used in the chimpanzee-first pretest trials; once the chimpanzee makes its selection, the containers remain uncovered as they are slid over to the human competitor. Second, in these trials the human competitor always succeeds in retrieving the grape not selected by the chimpanzee.
See Krachun et al. (2009a) for evidence that at least some chimpanzees are capable of distinguishing appearance from reality; in their study, about a third of the chimpanzees exhibited this capacity.
There is a potential worry here. Merely being present for the baiting of the size-distorting containers might be insufficient for the chimpanzees to avoid being fooled by those containers (even on the assumption that they can distinguish appearance from reality). The chimpanzees might need more exposure to the size-distorting containers in order to avoid being fooled by them. I thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this worry to my attention. To address this concern, Lurz and Krachun’s protocol should be amended so that, prior to the test trials, the chimpanzees are given time to witness, and even interact with, the size-distorting containers.
I imagine that some readers will at this point think that Lurz and Krachun’s mindreading hypothesis is unlikely to be borne out; the hypothesis may appear to demand too much of the chimpanzees. While this might be true, I would like to set aside such concerns in this paper. My aim is to show that Lurz and Krachun’s protocol fails to solve Povinelli’s Problem (or Povinelli’s ProblemI, depending on whether Option 1 or Option 2 is taken), even assuming that their hypothesis (or protocol) is not too complex.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing to my attention a very interesting alternative hypothesis that threatens to undermine the conclusion of the argument just described. On this hypothesis, chimpanzees do not distinguish appearance from reality, but rather have a deviant theory of size permanence. They select the grape in min, when choosing first, because they judge that it will return to the size it had prior to its being placed in the container. Moreover, they anticipatorily look at mag, upon hearing the competitor-first bell, because they expect their competitors to select the grape that is the larger grape at the time of the selection. This behavior-reading hypothesis predicts the same mixed, min-mag pattern as Lurz and Krachun’s hypothesis. The reviewer notes the affinity between his or her hypothesis and a suggestion made by Perner (1991) in response to Flavell et al. (1983). Notice, however, that this hypothesis is not complementary to Lurz and Krachun’s hypothesis. Their hypothesis claims that chimpanzees distinguish appearance from reality, not that they have a deviant theory of size permanence. On their hypothesis, the chimpanzees judge that the grape in mag is the smaller grape period, not that it is the larger grape at the time of the selection. For this reason, a hypothesis claiming that the chimpanzees anticipate their competitors’ selections on the basis of such deviant judgments cannot be complementary to Lurz and Krachun’s hypothesis. And this is so even if Lurz and Krachun are not warranted in denying the possibility that chimpanzees have a deviant theory of size permanence. What matters is the content of their actual hypothesis. It is important to keep in mind that non-complementary hypotheses of this kind do not threaten Lurz and Krachun’s alleged solution to Povinelli’s Problem.
As noted in footnote thirteen, Krachun et al. (2009a) claim that they have evidence that at least some chimpanzees are capable of distinguishing appearance from reality. Importantly, I do not wish to take a stand on whether chimpanzees have this capacity. My complementary hypothesis merely grants this point for the sake of argument. By doing so, Lurz and Krachun cannot reject my hypothesis on the grounds that it conflicts with the evidence presented in Krachun et al. (2009a).
I thank Carla Krachun for making this point clear to me.
I noted in footnote thirteen that Krachun et al. (2009a) claim to have evidence that at least some chimpanzees are able to distinguish appearance from reality. Assuming that Lurz and Krachun believe that these chimpanzees are able to make this distinction, in part, because they are able to introspect their own action-guiding perceptual states, they should believe that there is already evidence that chimpanzees self-attribute such states. That their protocol aims to determine whether chimpanzees attribute action-guiding perceptual states to others shows that they take seriously the possibility noted above.
I thank Robert Lurz for bringing this proposed amendment to my attention.
But is this correct? Against this claim, an anonymous reviewer pointed to a well-known study by Povinelli and Eddy (1996). Young chimpanzees begged an individual for food, even though the individual could not see them, either because his or her eyes were covered with a blindfold, or because his or her head was covered with a bucket. This, though, only suggests that the prediction of the mindreading hypothesis would not be borne out; i.e., the study suggests that the occluder panel would not cause the chimpanzees to judge that their competitors do not see the containers. But the point of the present discussion is to devise a protocol capable of distinguishing Lurz and Krachun’s mindreading hypothesis from my own. Whether chimpanzees would behave as the mindreading hypothesis predicts is a separate issue.
For a chimpanzee to judge that the occluder panel prevents its competitor from having an unobstructed line of gaze towards the containers, it must judge that the panel is an opaque barrier. This, though, might seem to require that the chimpanzee judge that the panel is something that prevents its competitor from seeing objects that are behind it, in which case the chimpanzee must think about what its competitor sees. But Lurz (2009, pp 309–10) convincingly argues that this is not the case. He claims that a chimpanzee’s concept of an opaque barrier might be primitive and functionally identified: “A subject’s, S’s, primitive concept of opaque barriers can be functionally identified (roughly) as the concept C* such that if S sees (or seems to see) an object O behind a barrier Y of a certain size, then, ceteris paribus, S believes that Y is not a C*; and if S sees (or seems to see) Y but does not see (or seem to see) O but believes (based upon the contents of his working memory of the environment) that O is behind Y, then, ceteris paribus, S believes that Y is a C*” (309–10). So long as a chimpanzee can judge that the panel between its competitor’s eyes and the containers is a C*, it will be able to judge that its competitor does not have an unobstructed line of gaze towards the containers.
In addition to an occluder panel, there are various other sorts of conditions that would likely cause a chimpanzee to judge that its competitor is not in a position to make a selection. Imagine, for example, that a chimpanzee’s competitor, when the competitor-first bell rings, has his hands tied behind his back, or is engaged in another activity, or is lying on the ground, etc.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Carla Krachun, Robert Lurz, Elliott Sober, Shannon Spaulding, Reuben Stern, and Danielle Wylie for providing very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks to Shannon Spaulding, William Roche, and, especially, Danielle Wylie for valuable subsequent discussions. Thanks, finally, to an executive journal editor and anonymous referees for their comments and advice during the review process.
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Roche, M. Povinelli’s Problem and Introspection. Rev.Phil.Psych. 4, 559–576 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-013-0152-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-013-0152-5