Volition in animals or not?
Charles Bell
An example of the prolongation of care in the wild is a capuchin
monkey born in the Venezuelan jungle with partially paralyzed legs.
The monkey could climb but not jump, and needed to be carried in order
to get from tree to tree. According to John Robinson, the group
carried the infant more than usual for its age (in capuchins many
individuals other than the mother transport infants). The bad news was
that the infant consumed normal amounts of food. Having no exercise,
it grew big and fat and became more and more of a burden. The group
bravely carried this butterball until it was seventeen months old,
when it disappeared. No one knows how its life ended; it might have
been abandoned by the group or snatched by a bird of prey.
The bonobos at the San Diego Zoo used to live in a grotto-type
enclosure separated from the public by a 2-meter-deep dry moat. The
moat was accessible to the apes by a chain hanging down into it; they
could freely descend and climb up again. In Peacemaking among
Primates, I described a situation repeatedly observed if the dominant
male, Vernon, disappeared into the moat. A younger male, Kalind, would
quickly pull up the chain and look down at Vernon with an open-mouthed
play face--the ape equivalent of laughing--while slapping the side of
the moat. Or several occasions the only other adult, Loretta, rushed
to the scene to "rescue" her mate by dropping the chain back down and
standing guard until Vernon had gotten out. Both Kalind and Loretta
seemed to know what purpose the chain served for someone at the bottom
of the moat and acted accordingly--the one by teasing, the other by
assisting.
Attachment, emotional identification, and innate responses, combined
with potent learning abilities, provide a firm enough basis for
elaborate caring behavior, which may sometimes be hard to distinguish
from human expressions of sympathy. The latter differ, however, in
that we recognize the other's experiences as belonging to the other,
which is the only way we can feel genuine concern. A mother who shuts
her eyes and grimaces when the doctor is about to stick a needle in
her child's arm is anticipating the emotional disturbance of her
child, hence of herself, while knowing full well that it is the child,
not she, who will feel the pain. Identifying with and caring about
another without losing one's own identity is the crux of human
sympathy. As we have seen, this requires certain cognitive abilities,
the most important one being a well-developed sense of self and the
ability to assume another individual's perspective.
Ray
news:bd2eea0d-8f36-4447...@c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
Charles, I think you fell into the trap we're all so used to doing, that is
relying solely on Wikipedia and not looking elsewhere.
I looked into him a bit because of my interest in brain research.
Below is an Q-A excerpted from an interview with him.
This guy is a crackpot.
Q-
You are originally from the Netherlands, where you studied the chimpanzees
of your first book, Chimpanzee Politics, before moving to the United States
in 1981. Did the experience of migrating from one culture to another have
any influence on your observation of culture among apes?
A-
The main effect of my cultural background is that I believe in tolerance and
consensus-building, much more so than Americans, who have an extremely
individualistic culture. This is reflected in my work. I like to think that
this is not because I project my values onto the animals I study, but rather
that I look at them in a different light. I am interested in conflict
resolution, a topic that [has been] largely ignored by those who [have grown
up] in cultures with a thoroughly competitive spirit. As a result, I
discovered reconciliation behavior in chimpanzees (they kiss and embrace
after fights)-a behavior that is now well-established in over twenty-five
primate species as well as in non-primates, such as dolphins and hyenas.
Many scientists are working on this topic now. This discovery has also led
to studies of peacemaking among human children, but curiously our knowledge
of human peacemaking lags behind current knowledge about animals.
Ray
Ray
> "Charles Bell" <cbe...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> news:bd2eea0d-8f36-4447...@c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
>
> is
> relying solely on Wikipedia and not looking elsewhere.
> I looked into him a bit because of my interest in brain research.
> Below is an Q-A excerpted from an interview with him.
> This guy is a crackpot.
>
Too quick. Sorry. You didn't get that from Wiki.
That still doesn't change my opinion of him.
Ray
Charles Bell
> > This guy is a crackpot.
>
> Too quick. Sorry. You didn't get that from Wiki.
I read the book /Good Natured/ by him from which I gave the quote. He
(and most socio-biologists) is a sort of anti-Dawkins in that he
believes generally altruism, or what certainly looks like sympathy and
is certainly a higher-order empathy, can be hard-wired into higher-
order animals, simians in particular. Considering that Dawkins IMHO
is the crackpot -- and socialist to boot -- I think it is important to
at least offer observational contra-evidence to Dawkins.
Charles Bell
> I read the book /Good Natured/ by him from which I gave the quote. �He
> (and most socio-biologists) is a sort of anti-Dawkins in that he
> believes generally altruism,
Be sure that I only mean "altruism" to be individual behaviors that
cannot be explained by Dawkins' Selfish Gene and not as Dawkins means
"altruism" which is a philosophical-social doctrine that men need to
consciously adopt (e.g., socialism, or, for theists, Christian
charity), rather than what is exhibited in nature in higher brain
functions through mirror-imaging, empathy and certainly apparently
"unselfish" volitional choice.
Judging by the Q&A, I am taking this even further than de Waal
intends, although in the book he shows that sort of intent with
frequent disclaimers as the one I gave at the end the quote I gave.
Rod Nibbe
Ray wrote:
> Ray
Why do you conclude from this he's a crackpot? I think
you need to take your own advice and look elsewhere.
I just did a pubmed search on him and found his
name on fifty peer-reviewed papers over the last
five years, many of them very high impact journals.
That doesn't prove he's not a crackpot, but you
have a lot more work to do to show he is one if
you ask me.
-RKN
Ray
news:4B437B20...@rknibbe.com...
>
>
> I just did a pubmed search on him and found his
> name on fifty peer-reviewed papers over the last
> five years, many of them very high impact journals.
> That doesn't prove he's not a crackpot, but you
> have a lot more work to do to show he is one if
> you ask me.
>
Ok, so maybe I overreacted. It's this damn global cooling.
It's making me irritable. I just thought that that QnA example
made it clear, it did to me, that as a scientist he isn't very
scientific.