I am York Research Chair in Philosophy of Animal Minds and Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University (Toronto), where I also help coordinate the Cognitive Science program and the Toronto Area Animal Cognition Discussion Group. I am the author author of a book on normative folk psychology (Do Chimpanzees Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology MIT 2012) and a book on animal minds (The Animal Mind, Routledge 2015) and co-editor with Jacob Beck of The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Animal Minds (2017). I was elected a Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars in 2015, and my research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I received my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota in 2000, and hold a BA in philosophy from Antioch College, and an MA in philosophy from Western Michigan University. In addition to my academic duties, I serve as a member of the Executive Board for The Borneo Orangutan Society Canada, which has the mission to promote conservation of orangutans and their habitat as well as to educate the public. Supervisors: Ronald Giere
Amicus curiae brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project's efforts to secure recognition of ... more Amicus curiae brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project's efforts to secure recognition of legal personhood and rights for two chimpanzees.
Philosophers Offer Support For Chimpanzee Rights Cases As Nonhuman Rights Project Seeks To Appeal To New York’s Highest Court
– Experts in animal ethics, animal political theory, the philosophy of animal cognition and behavior, and the philosophy of biology urge the Court of Appeals to recognize chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko as persons –
Feb. 26, 2018—New York, NY—After the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a motion for permission to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals in the cases of captive chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko, a group of prominent philosophers submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the NhRP’s efforts to secure recognition of their clients’ legal personhood and rights.
The NhRP argues in its Memorandum of Law, filed on Friday, that the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Judicial Department’s June 2017 ruling requires review by the state’s highest court, not only because it conflicts with New York’s common law habeas corpus statute and previous rulings of the Court of Appeals, the First Department, and other Appellate Departments on issues pertaining to common law personhood and habeas corpus relief, but also “based on the novelty, difficulty, importance, and effect of the legal and public policy issues raised.”
Engaging directly with a core issue raised by the NhRP’s appeal—the question of who is a “person” capable of possessing any legal rights—the philosophers’ brief maintains that the First Department’s ruling “uses a number of incompatible conceptions of person which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or in fact compatible with Kiko and Tommy’s personhood.” The philosophers who authored the brief are:
Kristin Andrews (York University) Gary Comstock (North Carolina State University) G.K.D. Crozier (Laurentian University) Sue Donaldson (Queen’s University) Andrew Fenton (Dalhousie University) Tyler M. John (Rutgers University) L. Syd M Johnson (Michigan Technological University) Robert C. Jones (California State University, Chico) Will Kymlicka (Queen’s University) Letitia Meynell (Dalhousie University) Nathan Nobis (Morehouse College) David Peña-Guzmán (California State University, San Francisco) James Rocha (California State University, Fresno) Bernard Rollin (Colorado State) Jeffrey Sebo (New York University) Adam Shriver (University of British Columbia) Rebecca L. Walker (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) “We submit this brief in our shared interest in ensuring a more just co-existence with other animals who live in our communities,” they write. “We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as nonhuman persons, Kiko and Tommy should be granted a writ of habeas corpus and their detainers should have the burden of showing the lawful justification of their current confinement.”
Tommy is a male chimpanzee whom the NhRP discovered living alone in a cage in a shed on a used trailer lot along Route 30 in Gloversville, New York.
Kiko is a male chimpanzee, who, to the best of the NhRP’s knowledge, is held in captivity in a cage in a cement storefront attached to a home in a residential area in Niagara Falls, New York.
The NhRP has been fighting since 2013 to free them to Save the Chimps sanctuary, where they can live with other chimpanzees in a more natural environment where their fundamental right to bodily liberty will be respected.
The NhRP expects the Court to rule on its motion for permission to appeal in 6-8 weeks.
Tommy was a child actor, starring in a Hollywood movie and performing live in New York. It sounds... more Tommy was a child actor, starring in a Hollywood movie and performing live in New York. It sounds like a dream come true, but as for many child actors, as he got older things started going wrong. Tommy’s downfall wasn’t due to financial excess or substance abuses. Rather, he was just growing up into a normal guy. So, he was treated like a normal guy in this culture—he was locked away in a cage. Tommy was left behind bars, fed and watered, but kept in hiatus until someone might want to use him again. Because Tommy is a chimpanzee, and chimpanzees are property under the law. We have some limitations on how we handle them—like the limitations we have handling hazardous materials. But Tommy doesn’t have any legal rights, because he is not a legal person. The Nonhuman Rights Project, headed by lawyer Stephen Wise, has been filing lawsuits on behalf of Tommy and other chimpanzees who are being held in terrible conditions that don’t suit their interest. In one such case, NY County Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffee decided against considering chimpanzees legal persons under the common law, writing, “the parameters of legal personhood… [will be focused] on the proper allocation of rights under the law, asking, in effect, who counts under our law.” Justice Jaffee didn’t want to make this decision via legal fiat, but instead she suggests that it is a matter of public policy that needs to be decided by society, rather than the court. This leaves room for philosophers to enter the conversation, and consider whether chimpanzees are metaphysical persons, regardless of how the common law concept is understood....
Apes can correctly determine how to help a person with a false belief. But they may not need a co... more Apes can correctly determine how to help a person with a false belief. But they may not need a concept of belief to do so. The recent study by Buttelmann and colleagues (2017) is the first interactive test of whether apes can respond appropriately when a social partner has a false belief. While this work, like gaze tracking studies (Krupenye et al. 2016), finds that apes can anticipate people's actions and goals when they have a false belief, we still don't know how the apes do so. Buttelmann et al. claim that they offer converging evidence supporting Krupenye et al.'s claim that apes understand other agent's beliefs While these studies are consistent with the claim that great apes understand beliefs, other mentalistic explanations are consistent with both findings. The 2017 study is a modification of the active helping task initially developed for 18-month-old infants (Buttelmann et al. 2009). The current experimental situation goes like this. The apes were exposed to two boxes, and with the help of a human assistant, learned that the boxes can be locked by sliding a bolt on the front. After demonstrating competence unlocking the boxes, an experimenter entered the scene carrying an object, and showed the object to the ape. The experimenter opened one box and placed the object inside and left the room. In the true belief condition, the experimenter returned to the room to witness the assistant move the object from its original location to the other box. Importantly, the experimenter looked away when the boxes were locked and unlocked, so the ape could infer that the experimenter didn't know how to unlock the box. In the false belief condition the experimenter remained outside the room while the assistant " sneakily " moved the object to the other box, and locked it. Next, in both conditions, the experimenter tried to open the now-empty locked box. He was unable to open the box (since he didn't know how to unlock it), made a helpless gesture, and then pushed the tray of boxes toward the ape. As in the test with the infants, the apes opened the box containing the object significantly more often in the false belief condition than in the true belief condition. Both populations appeared to be able to determine the experimenter's goal in the false belief condition, namely that the experimenter wanted the object. In the true belief condition, they found a difference between the children and the apes. Children opened the empty
We examine the recent attention to animal morality by philosophers and animal cognition researche... more We examine the recent attention to animal morality by philosophers and animal cognition researchers and argue that their approach risks underestimating the distribution of normative practice in animals by focusing on highly developed versions of morality. Our approach is to look for the moral foundations and normative thinking found across cultures in humans, following the work of Haidt, Graham, and Joseph (2009), Krebs and Janicki (2002) and Shweder and Haidt (1993). We argue for applying this approach to examining animal normative participation that begins with a categorization of the practices that may evidence valuing. Finally, we review behavioral evidence that great apes and cetaceans participate in normative practice.
A number of scholars have offered behavioral and physiological arguments in favor of the existenc... more A number of scholars have offered behavioral and physiological arguments in favor of the existence of empathy in other species (see Bekoff & Pierce 2009, Flack & de Waal 2000, Plutchik 1987). While the evidence is compelling, claims about empathy in nonhuman apes face two different challenges. The first challenge comes from a set of empirical findings that suggest great apes are not able to think about other’s beliefs. The argument here is based on a view that empathy is associated with folk psychological understanding of others’ mental states, or mindreading, and the existence of mindreading among the other apes is a matter of some dispute. The second worry comes from a host of recent experiments suggesting that nonhuman great ape communities lack certain social norms that we might expect empathic creatures to have, namely cooperation norms, norms of fairness, and punishment in response to violations of norms (especially third party punishment). If apes are empathetic, yet they do not use this capacity to help or punish, what is the role of empathy? We think that both these challenges can be answered by getting clearer about what empathy is and how it functions as well as considering the nature of empathic societies. We also believe that this analysis will clarify the relationship between being empathetic and being ethical.
Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, 2017
For almost forty years psychologists and philosophers have been devising experiments and testing ... more For almost forty years psychologists and philosophers have been devising experiments and testing chimpanzees on the question first asked by Premack and Woodruff in 1978: " Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? " With this question, they meant to ask whether chimpanzees do what they assumed we do, namely attribute beliefs and desires in order to predict behavior. This capacity is known as mindreading or theory of mind. After thirty years of chimpanzees failing all the tests we put to them, some researchers concluded that chimpanzees probably don't reason about belief (Call and Tomasello 2008). 1 Ten years later, those same researchers were part of a team that reversed course: " our results, in concert with existing data, suggest that apes solved the task by ascribing a false belief to the actor, challenging the view that the ability to attribute reality-incongruent mental states is specific to humans " (Krupenye et al. 2016). 2 The claim that passing the false belief task is evidence of false belief ascription is one that requires critical scrutiny. For one, there is no consensus on what is involved in ascribing belief, given the lack of agreement regarding the nature of belief. And, given that we don't directly observe anyone ascribing belief, but infer it from behavior, we must consider alternative explanations for the behavior. However, the typical alternative explanations considered are all of the variety that apes are not mentalists. There is good reason to think that apes are mentalists who see other apes and other animals as intentional agents. Nonetheless, they may not be 1 At the end of their review of the status of chimpanzee theory of mind research program after 30 years of research, Call and Tomasello wrote, " chimpanzees probably do not understand others in terms of a fully human-like belief–desire psychology in which they appreciate that others have mental representations of the world that drive their actions even when those do not correspond to reality. And so in a more narrow definition of theory of mind as an understanding of false beliefs, the answer to Premack and Woodruff's question might be no, they do not. Why chimpanzees do not seem to understand false beliefs in particular – or if there might be some situations in which they do understand false beliefs – are topics of ongoing research " (Call and Tomasello 2008: 191). 2 An important lesson to be taken away from the 40 years of testing chimpanzees on false belief tracking is that we need to be very cautious making claims of inability; not finding evidence of a capacity in an experimental setting can say more about the researchers than the chimpanzees. It took people who understand the chimpanzee's point of view-who think like a chimpanzee-to create materials that would interest a chimpanzee. The development of eye-tracking technology was also crucial.
Philosophical Perspectives on Animals: Mind, Ethics, Morals, edited by Klaus Petrus and Markus Wild
In the discussion of the evolution of human morality, the question has arisen about whether any o... more In the discussion of the evolution of human morality, the question has arisen about whether any other species enjoy properties of moral agency. While some psychologists and biologists have argued that they do, some moral theorists worry that animals cannot be autonomous agents without a theory of mind, or the ability to understand acting for reasons, and there is no evidence that any nonhuman animal has this ability. I argue that this concern should not lead one to conclude that great apes cannot be moral agents, even for those who think it unlikely that any other species has a theory of mind. Rather, I argue that great apes have other cognitive capacities that can fulfill the same functions that are sometimes seen as requirements for moral agency, such as knowing the likely consequences of an action by predicting the participants’ behaviors and emotional responses. Further, I present my arguments that a theory of mind evolved from an understanding of moral norms, so that humans were within the moral domain before they were able to consider their reasons for actions.
How much continuity is there between the social cognition of humans and other animals? To answer ... more How much continuity is there between the social cognition of humans and other animals? To answer this question, we first need accurate descriptions of the kinds of social cognition that exist in humans, and the kinds of social cognition that exist in other animals. Offering such descriptions, it turns out, is surprisingly difficult. Nonetheless, claims of discontinuities abound. Michael Tomasello's research on the abilities of children and nonhuman great apes leads him to conclude that only humans are true cooperators, who share a joint goal and work together to achieve it (Tomasello 2014). Kim Sterelny's apprenticeship hypothesis shares such a commitment to human uniqueness in cooperation and mindreading, for these skills are what facilitate the uniquely human practice of active teaching (Sterelny 2012). Tad Zawidzki argues that the uniquely human sociocognitive syndrome, which consists of language, cooperation, imitation, and mindreading, developed due to our intrinsic motivation to shape others and be shaped by others in a way that demonstrates norm following (Zawidzki 2013). And according to Gergely Csibra and György Gergely's (2011) Natural Pedagogy Hypothesis, humans alone engage in active teaching, because humans alone have an innate mechanism that produces and responds to signals indicating that a learning opportunity is at hand. I aim to challenge the view that there are stark discontinuities between the social psychology of humans and other animals—in particular between humans and the other great apes—by downgrading the mechanisms for human social cognition. Humans often rely on a relatively simple set of mechanisms that, together with the ability to identify intentional action, permit much of our sophisticated-looking social cognitive practices. Our social cognition involves a process of model building and forming expectations of how intentional agents should live up to these models. The models include normative elements—aspirational stereotypes of how people and groups should act—rather than mere descriptions of how people do in fact act. At least some other animals also have elements of pluralistic folk psychology—something that becomes apparent when we look for the right sorts of similarities and differences. I will start this chapter by arguing that mindreading beliefs is not the place to look for continuity between human and nonhuman social cognition, because mindreading beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes is a small and late-developing piece of our social cognitive skill set.1 Next, I will argue that a better account of human social cognition is pluralistic. There are three elements to the account of Pluralistic Folk Psychology that I defend: we understand other people in a variety of ways, we build models of individual people and groups, and the models are largely prescriptive rather than descriptive. After sketching the position of pluralistic folk psychology, I will present 1 In this paper I am going to use the term " mindreading " in this narrow sense of ascribing propositional attitudes such as belief and desire to others. There is no handy term for this subset of mindreading capacity, and " mindreading propositional attitudes " is unwieldy to repeat. " Mindreading " could be used in a wider sense, too, and include ascribing mental content such as perceptions, emotions, and sensations.
Since the question " Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind? " was raised in 1978, scientists have ... more Since the question " Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind? " was raised in 1978, scientists have attempted to answer it, and philosophers have attempted to clarify what the question means and whether it has been, or could be, answered. Mindreading (a term used mostly by philosophers) or theory of mind (a term preferred by scientists) refer to the ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. Some versions of the question focus on whether chimpanzees engage in belief reasoning, or can think about false belief, and chimpanzees have been given nonverbal versions of the false belief moved-object task (also known as the Sally-Ann task); there are no published reports of chimpanzees passing that task. Other versions of the question focus on whether chimpanzee understand what others can see, and chimpanzees can pass those tests. From this data, some claim that chimpanzees know something about perceptions, but nothing about belief. Others claim that chimpanzees don't understand belief or perceptions, because the data fails to overcome the " logical problem " , and permits an alternative, non-mentalistic interpretation. I will argue that neither view is warranted. Belief reasoning in chimpanzees has focused on examining false belief in a moved object scenario, but has largely ignored other functions of belief. The first part of the paper is an argument for how to best understand belief reasoning, and offers suggestion for future investigation. The second part of the paper addresses, and diffuses, the " logical problem ". I conclude that chimpanzees may reason about belief, but that there is already compelling evidence that they reason about perceptions.
Self-knowledge is one of the oldest topics of western philosophy, with the ancient Greeks advisin... more Self-knowledge is one of the oldest topics of western philosophy, with the ancient Greeks advising us to know thyself. But what does this advice amount to? What sort of knowledge are we being advised to gain, exactly? In discussions among contemporary analytic philosophers, we find talk of two rough categories of knowledge types: sensations and thoughts. So we might interpret the know thyself advice as directing us to attend to our thoughts and sensations. However, advice is usually given in order to direct us to do things that we might not already be doing, so we should interpret the ancient Greek advice as directing us to do something new. Furthermore, advice is usually given to direct us to do things that we can do.... The starting position in this paper is that adopting the methods of Pluralistic Folk Psychology for our own minds will lead us toward understanding the types of self-knowledge we can have. Once we know what self-knowledge is knowledge about, we will be in a better position to begin analyzing whether any types of knowledge of the self are accurate, or whether accuracy is achievable. The end result of this investigation will offer us insights into what is of value in self-knowledge, and into the nature of the self.
According to the theory of natural pedagogy, humans have a set of cognitive adaptations specializ... more According to the theory of natural pedagogy, humans have a set of cognitive adaptations specialized for transmitting and receiving knowledge through teaching; young children can acquire generalizable knowledge from ostensive signals even in a single interaction, and adults also actively teach young children. In this article, we critically examine the theory and argue that ostensive signals do not always allow children to learn generalizable knowledge more efficiently, and that the empirical evidence provided in favor of the theory of natural pedagogy does not defend the theory as presented, nor does it support a weakened version of the theory. We argue that these problems arise because the theory of natural pedagogy is grounded in a misguided assumption, namely that learning about the world and learning about people are two distinct and independent processes. If, on the other hand, we see the processes as interrelated, then we have a better explanation for the empirical evidence.
Abstract The debates about the form of folk psychology and the potential eliminability of folk ps... more Abstract The debates about the form of folk psychology and the potential eliminability of folk psychology rest on a particular view about how humans understand other minds. That is, though folk psychology is described as “ourcom monsense conception ofpsychological phenomena”(Churchland 1981, p. 67), there havebeen implicit assumptions regarding the nature of that commonsense conception. It has been assumed that folk psychology involves two practices, the prediction and explanation of behavior. And it has been assumed that one cognitive mechanism subsumes both these practices. I argue for a new conception of folk psychology, one which challenges these assumptions. There is reason to think that folk psychology is more diverse than is typically thought, both insofar as there are a heterogeneous collection of heuristics that are used, and as our folk psychological practices include more than prediction and explanation. While these practices remain central in the philosophical discussion...
We present an exploratory study of forest-living orangutan pantomiming, i.e. gesturing in which t... more We present an exploratory study of forest-living orangutan pantomiming, i.e. gesturing in which they act out their meaning, focusing on its occurrence, communicative functions, and complexities. Studies show that captive great apes may elaborate messages if communication fails, and isolated reports suggest that great apes occasionally pantomime. We predicted forest-living orangutans would pantomime spontaneously to communicate, especially to elaborate after communication failures. Mining existing databases on free-ranging rehabilitant orangutans’ behaviour identified 18 salient pantomimes. These pantomimes most often functioned as elaborations of failed requests, but also as deceptions and declaratives. Complexities identified include multimodality, re-enactments of past events and several features of language (productivity, compositionality, systematicity). These findings confirm that free- ranging rehabilitant orangutans pantomime and use pantomime to elaborate on their messages. Further, they use pantomime for multiple functions and create complex pantomimes that can express propositionally structured content. Thus, orangutan pantomime serves as a medium for communication, not a particular function. Mining cases of complex great ape communication originally reported in functional terms may then yield more evidence of pantomime.
We recently demonstrated, by mining observational data, that forest-living orangutans can communi... more We recently demonstrated, by mining observational data, that forest-living orangutans can communicate using gestures that qualify as pantomime (Russon and Andrews 2010). Pantomimes, like other iconic gestures, physically resemble their referents. Here we sketch evidence of pantomime in other great apes, address some methodological concerns, and draw conclusions about the cognitive capacities implicated in pantomime communication.
We examine the claim that the methodology of psychology leads to a bias in animal cognition resea... more We examine the claim that the methodology of psychology leads to a bias in animal cognition research against attributing ‘‘anthropomorphic’’ properties to animals. This charge is examined in light of a debate on the role of folk psychology between primatologists who emphasize similarities between humans and other apes, and those who emphasize differences. We argue that while in practice there is sometimes bias, either in the formulation of the null hypothesis or in the preference of Type-II errors over Type-I errors, the bias is not the result of proper use of the Neyman and Pearson hypothesis testing method. Psychologists’ preference for false negatives over false positives cannot justify a preference for avoiding anthropomorphic errors over anthropectic (Gk. anthropos—human; ektomia—to cut out) errors.
Following recent arguments that there is no logical problem with attributing mental or agential s... more Following recent arguments that there is no logical problem with attributing mental or agential states to animals, I address the epistemological problem of how to go about making accurate attributions. I suggest that there is a two-part general method for determining whether a psychological property can be accurately attributed to a member of another species: folk expert opinion and functionality. This method is based on well-known assessments used to attribute mental states to humans who are unable to self-ascribe due to an early stage of development or impairment, and can be used to describe social and emotional development as well as personality. I describe how instruments such as the Child Behavior Checklist, which relies on intersubjective expert opinion, could be modified to assess other species subjects. The measures are validated via the accuracy of the predictions that are derived, which is an example of the functionality of attribution. I respond to theoretical criticisms against use of this method, and argue that if the method counts as good science for infant cognition research, then it should count as good science for animal cognition research as well. Correspondingly, if the method doesn’t count as good science for animal cognition research, then we must be very skeptical of its use with nonverbal humans.
This article discusses “anthropomorphism” in the sense of the attribution of uniquely human menta... more This article discusses “anthropomorphism” in the sense of the attribution of uniquely human mental characteristics to nonhuman animals. One philosophical problem is to figure out how we can identify which properties are uniquely human. The discussion maintains that one goal of animal cognition studies is to determine which cognitive abilities animals use and whether some identifiable cognitive properties are found only in the human species. If the properties are uniquely human, then asserting that some other animal has that property would be false and an example of anthropomorphism. In the empirical and the philosophical literatures, features that have been described as uniquely human include psychological states such as beliefs and desires, personality traits such as confidence or timidity, emotions such as happiness or anger, social-organizational properties such as culture or friendship, and moral behavior such as punishment or rape.
Animals: Basic Philosophical Concepts, edited by Andreas Blank
If we consider that the field of animal cognition research began with Darwin’s stories about clev... more If we consider that the field of animal cognition research began with Darwin’s stories about clever animals, we can see that over the 150 years of work done in this field, there has been a slow swing back and forth between two extreme positions. One extreme is the view that other animals are very much like us, that we can use introspection in order to understand why other animals act as they do, and that no huge interpretive leap is required to understand animal minds. On the other extreme we have the view that other animals are utterly different from us, that no matter how similar their behaviors may appear, the mechanisms they use to act and the reasons for their actions are utterly unlike humans behavior; it would be anthropocentric to assume otherwise. In this paper I want to defend a middle ground that involves the use of folk psychology in the science of animal cognition research, in order to investigate both similarities and differences. Further, I will argue that the use of folk psychology need not involve a problematic anthropomorphism. I will show how the animal cognition research benefits by appeal to folk psychology by discussing the study the psychologist Anne Russon and I conducted on orangutan pantomime communication (Russon and Andrews 2010).
Amicus curiae brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project's efforts to secure recognition of ... more Amicus curiae brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project's efforts to secure recognition of legal personhood and rights for two chimpanzees.
Philosophers Offer Support For Chimpanzee Rights Cases As Nonhuman Rights Project Seeks To Appeal To New York’s Highest Court
– Experts in animal ethics, animal political theory, the philosophy of animal cognition and behavior, and the philosophy of biology urge the Court of Appeals to recognize chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko as persons –
Feb. 26, 2018—New York, NY—After the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a motion for permission to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals in the cases of captive chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko, a group of prominent philosophers submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the NhRP’s efforts to secure recognition of their clients’ legal personhood and rights.
The NhRP argues in its Memorandum of Law, filed on Friday, that the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Judicial Department’s June 2017 ruling requires review by the state’s highest court, not only because it conflicts with New York’s common law habeas corpus statute and previous rulings of the Court of Appeals, the First Department, and other Appellate Departments on issues pertaining to common law personhood and habeas corpus relief, but also “based on the novelty, difficulty, importance, and effect of the legal and public policy issues raised.”
Engaging directly with a core issue raised by the NhRP’s appeal—the question of who is a “person” capable of possessing any legal rights—the philosophers’ brief maintains that the First Department’s ruling “uses a number of incompatible conceptions of person which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or in fact compatible with Kiko and Tommy’s personhood.” The philosophers who authored the brief are:
Kristin Andrews (York University) Gary Comstock (North Carolina State University) G.K.D. Crozier (Laurentian University) Sue Donaldson (Queen’s University) Andrew Fenton (Dalhousie University) Tyler M. John (Rutgers University) L. Syd M Johnson (Michigan Technological University) Robert C. Jones (California State University, Chico) Will Kymlicka (Queen’s University) Letitia Meynell (Dalhousie University) Nathan Nobis (Morehouse College) David Peña-Guzmán (California State University, San Francisco) James Rocha (California State University, Fresno) Bernard Rollin (Colorado State) Jeffrey Sebo (New York University) Adam Shriver (University of British Columbia) Rebecca L. Walker (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) “We submit this brief in our shared interest in ensuring a more just co-existence with other animals who live in our communities,” they write. “We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as nonhuman persons, Kiko and Tommy should be granted a writ of habeas corpus and their detainers should have the burden of showing the lawful justification of their current confinement.”
Tommy is a male chimpanzee whom the NhRP discovered living alone in a cage in a shed on a used trailer lot along Route 30 in Gloversville, New York.
Kiko is a male chimpanzee, who, to the best of the NhRP’s knowledge, is held in captivity in a cage in a cement storefront attached to a home in a residential area in Niagara Falls, New York.
The NhRP has been fighting since 2013 to free them to Save the Chimps sanctuary, where they can live with other chimpanzees in a more natural environment where their fundamental right to bodily liberty will be respected.
The NhRP expects the Court to rule on its motion for permission to appeal in 6-8 weeks.
Tommy was a child actor, starring in a Hollywood movie and performing live in New York. It sounds... more Tommy was a child actor, starring in a Hollywood movie and performing live in New York. It sounds like a dream come true, but as for many child actors, as he got older things started going wrong. Tommy’s downfall wasn’t due to financial excess or substance abuses. Rather, he was just growing up into a normal guy. So, he was treated like a normal guy in this culture—he was locked away in a cage. Tommy was left behind bars, fed and watered, but kept in hiatus until someone might want to use him again. Because Tommy is a chimpanzee, and chimpanzees are property under the law. We have some limitations on how we handle them—like the limitations we have handling hazardous materials. But Tommy doesn’t have any legal rights, because he is not a legal person. The Nonhuman Rights Project, headed by lawyer Stephen Wise, has been filing lawsuits on behalf of Tommy and other chimpanzees who are being held in terrible conditions that don’t suit their interest. In one such case, NY County Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffee decided against considering chimpanzees legal persons under the common law, writing, “the parameters of legal personhood… [will be focused] on the proper allocation of rights under the law, asking, in effect, who counts under our law.” Justice Jaffee didn’t want to make this decision via legal fiat, but instead she suggests that it is a matter of public policy that needs to be decided by society, rather than the court. This leaves room for philosophers to enter the conversation, and consider whether chimpanzees are metaphysical persons, regardless of how the common law concept is understood....
Apes can correctly determine how to help a person with a false belief. But they may not need a co... more Apes can correctly determine how to help a person with a false belief. But they may not need a concept of belief to do so. The recent study by Buttelmann and colleagues (2017) is the first interactive test of whether apes can respond appropriately when a social partner has a false belief. While this work, like gaze tracking studies (Krupenye et al. 2016), finds that apes can anticipate people's actions and goals when they have a false belief, we still don't know how the apes do so. Buttelmann et al. claim that they offer converging evidence supporting Krupenye et al.'s claim that apes understand other agent's beliefs While these studies are consistent with the claim that great apes understand beliefs, other mentalistic explanations are consistent with both findings. The 2017 study is a modification of the active helping task initially developed for 18-month-old infants (Buttelmann et al. 2009). The current experimental situation goes like this. The apes were exposed to two boxes, and with the help of a human assistant, learned that the boxes can be locked by sliding a bolt on the front. After demonstrating competence unlocking the boxes, an experimenter entered the scene carrying an object, and showed the object to the ape. The experimenter opened one box and placed the object inside and left the room. In the true belief condition, the experimenter returned to the room to witness the assistant move the object from its original location to the other box. Importantly, the experimenter looked away when the boxes were locked and unlocked, so the ape could infer that the experimenter didn't know how to unlock the box. In the false belief condition the experimenter remained outside the room while the assistant " sneakily " moved the object to the other box, and locked it. Next, in both conditions, the experimenter tried to open the now-empty locked box. He was unable to open the box (since he didn't know how to unlock it), made a helpless gesture, and then pushed the tray of boxes toward the ape. As in the test with the infants, the apes opened the box containing the object significantly more often in the false belief condition than in the true belief condition. Both populations appeared to be able to determine the experimenter's goal in the false belief condition, namely that the experimenter wanted the object. In the true belief condition, they found a difference between the children and the apes. Children opened the empty
We examine the recent attention to animal morality by philosophers and animal cognition researche... more We examine the recent attention to animal morality by philosophers and animal cognition researchers and argue that their approach risks underestimating the distribution of normative practice in animals by focusing on highly developed versions of morality. Our approach is to look for the moral foundations and normative thinking found across cultures in humans, following the work of Haidt, Graham, and Joseph (2009), Krebs and Janicki (2002) and Shweder and Haidt (1993). We argue for applying this approach to examining animal normative participation that begins with a categorization of the practices that may evidence valuing. Finally, we review behavioral evidence that great apes and cetaceans participate in normative practice.
A number of scholars have offered behavioral and physiological arguments in favor of the existenc... more A number of scholars have offered behavioral and physiological arguments in favor of the existence of empathy in other species (see Bekoff & Pierce 2009, Flack & de Waal 2000, Plutchik 1987). While the evidence is compelling, claims about empathy in nonhuman apes face two different challenges. The first challenge comes from a set of empirical findings that suggest great apes are not able to think about other’s beliefs. The argument here is based on a view that empathy is associated with folk psychological understanding of others’ mental states, or mindreading, and the existence of mindreading among the other apes is a matter of some dispute. The second worry comes from a host of recent experiments suggesting that nonhuman great ape communities lack certain social norms that we might expect empathic creatures to have, namely cooperation norms, norms of fairness, and punishment in response to violations of norms (especially third party punishment). If apes are empathetic, yet they do not use this capacity to help or punish, what is the role of empathy? We think that both these challenges can be answered by getting clearer about what empathy is and how it functions as well as considering the nature of empathic societies. We also believe that this analysis will clarify the relationship between being empathetic and being ethical.
Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, 2017
For almost forty years psychologists and philosophers have been devising experiments and testing ... more For almost forty years psychologists and philosophers have been devising experiments and testing chimpanzees on the question first asked by Premack and Woodruff in 1978: " Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? " With this question, they meant to ask whether chimpanzees do what they assumed we do, namely attribute beliefs and desires in order to predict behavior. This capacity is known as mindreading or theory of mind. After thirty years of chimpanzees failing all the tests we put to them, some researchers concluded that chimpanzees probably don't reason about belief (Call and Tomasello 2008). 1 Ten years later, those same researchers were part of a team that reversed course: " our results, in concert with existing data, suggest that apes solved the task by ascribing a false belief to the actor, challenging the view that the ability to attribute reality-incongruent mental states is specific to humans " (Krupenye et al. 2016). 2 The claim that passing the false belief task is evidence of false belief ascription is one that requires critical scrutiny. For one, there is no consensus on what is involved in ascribing belief, given the lack of agreement regarding the nature of belief. And, given that we don't directly observe anyone ascribing belief, but infer it from behavior, we must consider alternative explanations for the behavior. However, the typical alternative explanations considered are all of the variety that apes are not mentalists. There is good reason to think that apes are mentalists who see other apes and other animals as intentional agents. Nonetheless, they may not be 1 At the end of their review of the status of chimpanzee theory of mind research program after 30 years of research, Call and Tomasello wrote, " chimpanzees probably do not understand others in terms of a fully human-like belief–desire psychology in which they appreciate that others have mental representations of the world that drive their actions even when those do not correspond to reality. And so in a more narrow definition of theory of mind as an understanding of false beliefs, the answer to Premack and Woodruff's question might be no, they do not. Why chimpanzees do not seem to understand false beliefs in particular – or if there might be some situations in which they do understand false beliefs – are topics of ongoing research " (Call and Tomasello 2008: 191). 2 An important lesson to be taken away from the 40 years of testing chimpanzees on false belief tracking is that we need to be very cautious making claims of inability; not finding evidence of a capacity in an experimental setting can say more about the researchers than the chimpanzees. It took people who understand the chimpanzee's point of view-who think like a chimpanzee-to create materials that would interest a chimpanzee. The development of eye-tracking technology was also crucial.
Philosophical Perspectives on Animals: Mind, Ethics, Morals, edited by Klaus Petrus and Markus Wild
In the discussion of the evolution of human morality, the question has arisen about whether any o... more In the discussion of the evolution of human morality, the question has arisen about whether any other species enjoy properties of moral agency. While some psychologists and biologists have argued that they do, some moral theorists worry that animals cannot be autonomous agents without a theory of mind, or the ability to understand acting for reasons, and there is no evidence that any nonhuman animal has this ability. I argue that this concern should not lead one to conclude that great apes cannot be moral agents, even for those who think it unlikely that any other species has a theory of mind. Rather, I argue that great apes have other cognitive capacities that can fulfill the same functions that are sometimes seen as requirements for moral agency, such as knowing the likely consequences of an action by predicting the participants’ behaviors and emotional responses. Further, I present my arguments that a theory of mind evolved from an understanding of moral norms, so that humans were within the moral domain before they were able to consider their reasons for actions.
How much continuity is there between the social cognition of humans and other animals? To answer ... more How much continuity is there between the social cognition of humans and other animals? To answer this question, we first need accurate descriptions of the kinds of social cognition that exist in humans, and the kinds of social cognition that exist in other animals. Offering such descriptions, it turns out, is surprisingly difficult. Nonetheless, claims of discontinuities abound. Michael Tomasello's research on the abilities of children and nonhuman great apes leads him to conclude that only humans are true cooperators, who share a joint goal and work together to achieve it (Tomasello 2014). Kim Sterelny's apprenticeship hypothesis shares such a commitment to human uniqueness in cooperation and mindreading, for these skills are what facilitate the uniquely human practice of active teaching (Sterelny 2012). Tad Zawidzki argues that the uniquely human sociocognitive syndrome, which consists of language, cooperation, imitation, and mindreading, developed due to our intrinsic motivation to shape others and be shaped by others in a way that demonstrates norm following (Zawidzki 2013). And according to Gergely Csibra and György Gergely's (2011) Natural Pedagogy Hypothesis, humans alone engage in active teaching, because humans alone have an innate mechanism that produces and responds to signals indicating that a learning opportunity is at hand. I aim to challenge the view that there are stark discontinuities between the social psychology of humans and other animals—in particular between humans and the other great apes—by downgrading the mechanisms for human social cognition. Humans often rely on a relatively simple set of mechanisms that, together with the ability to identify intentional action, permit much of our sophisticated-looking social cognitive practices. Our social cognition involves a process of model building and forming expectations of how intentional agents should live up to these models. The models include normative elements—aspirational stereotypes of how people and groups should act—rather than mere descriptions of how people do in fact act. At least some other animals also have elements of pluralistic folk psychology—something that becomes apparent when we look for the right sorts of similarities and differences. I will start this chapter by arguing that mindreading beliefs is not the place to look for continuity between human and nonhuman social cognition, because mindreading beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes is a small and late-developing piece of our social cognitive skill set.1 Next, I will argue that a better account of human social cognition is pluralistic. There are three elements to the account of Pluralistic Folk Psychology that I defend: we understand other people in a variety of ways, we build models of individual people and groups, and the models are largely prescriptive rather than descriptive. After sketching the position of pluralistic folk psychology, I will present 1 In this paper I am going to use the term " mindreading " in this narrow sense of ascribing propositional attitudes such as belief and desire to others. There is no handy term for this subset of mindreading capacity, and " mindreading propositional attitudes " is unwieldy to repeat. " Mindreading " could be used in a wider sense, too, and include ascribing mental content such as perceptions, emotions, and sensations.
Since the question " Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind? " was raised in 1978, scientists have ... more Since the question " Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind? " was raised in 1978, scientists have attempted to answer it, and philosophers have attempted to clarify what the question means and whether it has been, or could be, answered. Mindreading (a term used mostly by philosophers) or theory of mind (a term preferred by scientists) refer to the ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. Some versions of the question focus on whether chimpanzees engage in belief reasoning, or can think about false belief, and chimpanzees have been given nonverbal versions of the false belief moved-object task (also known as the Sally-Ann task); there are no published reports of chimpanzees passing that task. Other versions of the question focus on whether chimpanzee understand what others can see, and chimpanzees can pass those tests. From this data, some claim that chimpanzees know something about perceptions, but nothing about belief. Others claim that chimpanzees don't understand belief or perceptions, because the data fails to overcome the " logical problem " , and permits an alternative, non-mentalistic interpretation. I will argue that neither view is warranted. Belief reasoning in chimpanzees has focused on examining false belief in a moved object scenario, but has largely ignored other functions of belief. The first part of the paper is an argument for how to best understand belief reasoning, and offers suggestion for future investigation. The second part of the paper addresses, and diffuses, the " logical problem ". I conclude that chimpanzees may reason about belief, but that there is already compelling evidence that they reason about perceptions.
Self-knowledge is one of the oldest topics of western philosophy, with the ancient Greeks advisin... more Self-knowledge is one of the oldest topics of western philosophy, with the ancient Greeks advising us to know thyself. But what does this advice amount to? What sort of knowledge are we being advised to gain, exactly? In discussions among contemporary analytic philosophers, we find talk of two rough categories of knowledge types: sensations and thoughts. So we might interpret the know thyself advice as directing us to attend to our thoughts and sensations. However, advice is usually given in order to direct us to do things that we might not already be doing, so we should interpret the ancient Greek advice as directing us to do something new. Furthermore, advice is usually given to direct us to do things that we can do.... The starting position in this paper is that adopting the methods of Pluralistic Folk Psychology for our own minds will lead us toward understanding the types of self-knowledge we can have. Once we know what self-knowledge is knowledge about, we will be in a better position to begin analyzing whether any types of knowledge of the self are accurate, or whether accuracy is achievable. The end result of this investigation will offer us insights into what is of value in self-knowledge, and into the nature of the self.
According to the theory of natural pedagogy, humans have a set of cognitive adaptations specializ... more According to the theory of natural pedagogy, humans have a set of cognitive adaptations specialized for transmitting and receiving knowledge through teaching; young children can acquire generalizable knowledge from ostensive signals even in a single interaction, and adults also actively teach young children. In this article, we critically examine the theory and argue that ostensive signals do not always allow children to learn generalizable knowledge more efficiently, and that the empirical evidence provided in favor of the theory of natural pedagogy does not defend the theory as presented, nor does it support a weakened version of the theory. We argue that these problems arise because the theory of natural pedagogy is grounded in a misguided assumption, namely that learning about the world and learning about people are two distinct and independent processes. If, on the other hand, we see the processes as interrelated, then we have a better explanation for the empirical evidence.
Abstract The debates about the form of folk psychology and the potential eliminability of folk ps... more Abstract The debates about the form of folk psychology and the potential eliminability of folk psychology rest on a particular view about how humans understand other minds. That is, though folk psychology is described as “ourcom monsense conception ofpsychological phenomena”(Churchland 1981, p. 67), there havebeen implicit assumptions regarding the nature of that commonsense conception. It has been assumed that folk psychology involves two practices, the prediction and explanation of behavior. And it has been assumed that one cognitive mechanism subsumes both these practices. I argue for a new conception of folk psychology, one which challenges these assumptions. There is reason to think that folk psychology is more diverse than is typically thought, both insofar as there are a heterogeneous collection of heuristics that are used, and as our folk psychological practices include more than prediction and explanation. While these practices remain central in the philosophical discussion...
We present an exploratory study of forest-living orangutan pantomiming, i.e. gesturing in which t... more We present an exploratory study of forest-living orangutan pantomiming, i.e. gesturing in which they act out their meaning, focusing on its occurrence, communicative functions, and complexities. Studies show that captive great apes may elaborate messages if communication fails, and isolated reports suggest that great apes occasionally pantomime. We predicted forest-living orangutans would pantomime spontaneously to communicate, especially to elaborate after communication failures. Mining existing databases on free-ranging rehabilitant orangutans’ behaviour identified 18 salient pantomimes. These pantomimes most often functioned as elaborations of failed requests, but also as deceptions and declaratives. Complexities identified include multimodality, re-enactments of past events and several features of language (productivity, compositionality, systematicity). These findings confirm that free- ranging rehabilitant orangutans pantomime and use pantomime to elaborate on their messages. Further, they use pantomime for multiple functions and create complex pantomimes that can express propositionally structured content. Thus, orangutan pantomime serves as a medium for communication, not a particular function. Mining cases of complex great ape communication originally reported in functional terms may then yield more evidence of pantomime.
We recently demonstrated, by mining observational data, that forest-living orangutans can communi... more We recently demonstrated, by mining observational data, that forest-living orangutans can communicate using gestures that qualify as pantomime (Russon and Andrews 2010). Pantomimes, like other iconic gestures, physically resemble their referents. Here we sketch evidence of pantomime in other great apes, address some methodological concerns, and draw conclusions about the cognitive capacities implicated in pantomime communication.
We examine the claim that the methodology of psychology leads to a bias in animal cognition resea... more We examine the claim that the methodology of psychology leads to a bias in animal cognition research against attributing ‘‘anthropomorphic’’ properties to animals. This charge is examined in light of a debate on the role of folk psychology between primatologists who emphasize similarities between humans and other apes, and those who emphasize differences. We argue that while in practice there is sometimes bias, either in the formulation of the null hypothesis or in the preference of Type-II errors over Type-I errors, the bias is not the result of proper use of the Neyman and Pearson hypothesis testing method. Psychologists’ preference for false negatives over false positives cannot justify a preference for avoiding anthropomorphic errors over anthropectic (Gk. anthropos—human; ektomia—to cut out) errors.
Following recent arguments that there is no logical problem with attributing mental or agential s... more Following recent arguments that there is no logical problem with attributing mental or agential states to animals, I address the epistemological problem of how to go about making accurate attributions. I suggest that there is a two-part general method for determining whether a psychological property can be accurately attributed to a member of another species: folk expert opinion and functionality. This method is based on well-known assessments used to attribute mental states to humans who are unable to self-ascribe due to an early stage of development or impairment, and can be used to describe social and emotional development as well as personality. I describe how instruments such as the Child Behavior Checklist, which relies on intersubjective expert opinion, could be modified to assess other species subjects. The measures are validated via the accuracy of the predictions that are derived, which is an example of the functionality of attribution. I respond to theoretical criticisms against use of this method, and argue that if the method counts as good science for infant cognition research, then it should count as good science for animal cognition research as well. Correspondingly, if the method doesn’t count as good science for animal cognition research, then we must be very skeptical of its use with nonverbal humans.
This article discusses “anthropomorphism” in the sense of the attribution of uniquely human menta... more This article discusses “anthropomorphism” in the sense of the attribution of uniquely human mental characteristics to nonhuman animals. One philosophical problem is to figure out how we can identify which properties are uniquely human. The discussion maintains that one goal of animal cognition studies is to determine which cognitive abilities animals use and whether some identifiable cognitive properties are found only in the human species. If the properties are uniquely human, then asserting that some other animal has that property would be false and an example of anthropomorphism. In the empirical and the philosophical literatures, features that have been described as uniquely human include psychological states such as beliefs and desires, personality traits such as confidence or timidity, emotions such as happiness or anger, social-organizational properties such as culture or friendship, and moral behavior such as punishment or rape.
Animals: Basic Philosophical Concepts, edited by Andreas Blank
If we consider that the field of animal cognition research began with Darwin’s stories about clev... more If we consider that the field of animal cognition research began with Darwin’s stories about clever animals, we can see that over the 150 years of work done in this field, there has been a slow swing back and forth between two extreme positions. One extreme is the view that other animals are very much like us, that we can use introspection in order to understand why other animals act as they do, and that no huge interpretive leap is required to understand animal minds. On the other extreme we have the view that other animals are utterly different from us, that no matter how similar their behaviors may appear, the mechanisms they use to act and the reasons for their actions are utterly unlike humans behavior; it would be anthropocentric to assume otherwise. In this paper I want to defend a middle ground that involves the use of folk psychology in the science of animal cognition research, in order to investigate both similarities and differences. Further, I will argue that the use of folk psychology need not involve a problematic anthropomorphism. I will show how the animal cognition research benefits by appeal to folk psychology by discussing the study the psychologist Anne Russon and I conducted on orangutan pantomime communication (Russon and Andrews 2010).
This volume collects 49 original essays that provide opinionated introductions to a variety of ph... more This volume collects 49 original essays that provide opinionated introductions to a variety of philosophical topics concerning (nonhuman) animal minds. The essays are written by established or emerging leaders in the field, and yet are accessible to newcomers who have some experience with philosophical writing. As the volume provides a broad snapshot of the state of the art in the philosophy of animal minds, our expectation is that it will also serve as a useful reference work for more seasoned scholars.
In our daily interactions with other people—driving down the street, meeting up for lunch, coordi... more In our daily interactions with other people—driving down the street, meeting up for lunch, coordinating childcare, delegating work—we rely on a commonsense understanding of how minds work, which we can call folk psychology. We develop folk psychology through infancy and early childhood, but it continues to grow and change as we reach adulthood, when we get better at making predictions of what others will do, and better at explaining behavior. What accounts for our amazing abilities to understand other people? A traditional answer is that humans have an ability that may be unique to the species—we read minds. Not like a mentalist reads minds, but we interpret people’s behavior as being caused by hidden beliefs and desires. By carefully watching others, we are able to figure out others hidden mental states, and then we apply a theory of behavior in order to determine what the person will do next.
In my book Do Apes Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology, I challenge this view, arguing that we don’t see others as bags of skin filled with hidden beliefs. Rather we see others as fully fleshed out people with histories, social contexts, personalities, moods, emotions, and so forth. Drawing on research from social psychology, developmental psychology, and animal cognition I draw a rich picture of human social cognition, and demonstrate how we solve our interpersonal predictive tasks much in the same way other apes (such as orangutans and chimpanzees) solve theirs. It turns out we are more like the other apes than we thought! While humans can read minds, we don’t need to do it very often to predict behavior, but rather we do it to explain behavior, and the evolution of this ability arose alongside the evolution of morality. Whether the other apes try to explain behavior, and hence whether they think about others’ thoughts or what others should do is an open research question.
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Papers by Kristin Andrews
Philosophers Offer Support For Chimpanzee Rights Cases As Nonhuman Rights Project Seeks To Appeal To New York’s Highest Court
– Experts in animal ethics, animal political theory, the philosophy of animal cognition and behavior, and the philosophy of biology urge the Court of Appeals to recognize chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko as persons –
Feb. 26, 2018—New York, NY—After the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a motion for permission to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals in the cases of captive chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko, a group of prominent philosophers submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the NhRP’s efforts to secure recognition of their clients’ legal personhood and rights.
The NhRP argues in its Memorandum of Law, filed on Friday, that the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Judicial Department’s June 2017 ruling requires review by the state’s highest court, not only because it conflicts with New York’s common law habeas corpus statute and previous rulings of the Court of Appeals, the First Department, and other Appellate Departments on issues pertaining to common law personhood and habeas corpus relief, but also “based on the novelty, difficulty, importance, and effect of the legal and public policy issues raised.”
Engaging directly with a core issue raised by the NhRP’s appeal—the question of who is a “person” capable of possessing any legal rights—the philosophers’ brief maintains that the First Department’s ruling “uses a number of incompatible conceptions of person which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or in fact compatible with Kiko and Tommy’s personhood.” The philosophers who authored the brief are:
Kristin Andrews (York University)
Gary Comstock (North Carolina State University)
G.K.D. Crozier (Laurentian University)
Sue Donaldson (Queen’s University)
Andrew Fenton (Dalhousie University)
Tyler M. John (Rutgers University)
L. Syd M Johnson (Michigan Technological University)
Robert C. Jones (California State University, Chico)
Will Kymlicka (Queen’s University)
Letitia Meynell (Dalhousie University)
Nathan Nobis (Morehouse College)
David Peña-Guzmán (California State University, San Francisco)
James Rocha (California State University, Fresno)
Bernard Rollin (Colorado State)
Jeffrey Sebo (New York University)
Adam Shriver (University of British Columbia)
Rebecca L. Walker (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
“We submit this brief in our shared interest in ensuring a more just co-existence with other animals who live in our communities,” they write. “We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as nonhuman persons, Kiko and Tommy should be granted a writ of habeas corpus and their detainers should have the burden of showing the lawful justification of their current confinement.”
Tommy is a male chimpanzee whom the NhRP discovered living alone in a cage in a shed on a used trailer lot along Route 30 in Gloversville, New York.
Kiko is a male chimpanzee, who, to the best of the NhRP’s knowledge, is held in captivity in a cage in a cement storefront attached to a home in a residential area in Niagara Falls, New York.
The NhRP has been fighting since 2013 to free them to Save the Chimps sanctuary, where they can live with other chimpanzees in a more natural environment where their fundamental right to bodily liberty will be respected.
The NhRP expects the Court to rule on its motion for permission to appeal in 6-8 weeks.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, headed by lawyer Stephen Wise, has been filing lawsuits on behalf of Tommy and other chimpanzees who are being held in terrible conditions that don’t suit their interest. In one such case, NY County Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffee decided against considering chimpanzees legal persons under the common law, writing, “the parameters of legal personhood… [will be focused] on the proper allocation of rights under the law, asking, in effect, who counts under our law.” Justice Jaffee didn’t want to make this decision via legal fiat, but instead she suggests that it is a matter of public policy that needs to be decided by society, rather than the court. This leaves room for philosophers to enter the conversation, and consider whether chimpanzees are metaphysical persons, regardless of how the common law concept is understood....
In discussions among contemporary analytic philosophers, we find talk of two rough categories of knowledge types: sensations and thoughts. So we might interpret the know thyself advice as directing us to attend to our thoughts and sensations. However, advice is usually given in order to direct us to do things that we might not already be doing, so we should interpret the ancient Greek advice as directing us to do something new. Furthermore, advice is usually given to direct us to do things that we can do.... The starting position in this paper is that adopting the methods of Pluralistic Folk Psychology for our own minds will lead us toward understanding the types of self-knowledge we can have. Once we know what self-knowledge is knowledge about, we will be in a better position to begin analyzing whether any types of knowledge of the self are accurate, or whether accuracy is achievable. The end result of this investigation will offer us insights into what is of value in self-knowledge, and into the nature of the self.
Philosophers Offer Support For Chimpanzee Rights Cases As Nonhuman Rights Project Seeks To Appeal To New York’s Highest Court
– Experts in animal ethics, animal political theory, the philosophy of animal cognition and behavior, and the philosophy of biology urge the Court of Appeals to recognize chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko as persons –
Feb. 26, 2018—New York, NY—After the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a motion for permission to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals in the cases of captive chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko, a group of prominent philosophers submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the NhRP’s efforts to secure recognition of their clients’ legal personhood and rights.
The NhRP argues in its Memorandum of Law, filed on Friday, that the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Judicial Department’s June 2017 ruling requires review by the state’s highest court, not only because it conflicts with New York’s common law habeas corpus statute and previous rulings of the Court of Appeals, the First Department, and other Appellate Departments on issues pertaining to common law personhood and habeas corpus relief, but also “based on the novelty, difficulty, importance, and effect of the legal and public policy issues raised.”
Engaging directly with a core issue raised by the NhRP’s appeal—the question of who is a “person” capable of possessing any legal rights—the philosophers’ brief maintains that the First Department’s ruling “uses a number of incompatible conceptions of person which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or in fact compatible with Kiko and Tommy’s personhood.” The philosophers who authored the brief are:
Kristin Andrews (York University)
Gary Comstock (North Carolina State University)
G.K.D. Crozier (Laurentian University)
Sue Donaldson (Queen’s University)
Andrew Fenton (Dalhousie University)
Tyler M. John (Rutgers University)
L. Syd M Johnson (Michigan Technological University)
Robert C. Jones (California State University, Chico)
Will Kymlicka (Queen’s University)
Letitia Meynell (Dalhousie University)
Nathan Nobis (Morehouse College)
David Peña-Guzmán (California State University, San Francisco)
James Rocha (California State University, Fresno)
Bernard Rollin (Colorado State)
Jeffrey Sebo (New York University)
Adam Shriver (University of British Columbia)
Rebecca L. Walker (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
“We submit this brief in our shared interest in ensuring a more just co-existence with other animals who live in our communities,” they write. “We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as nonhuman persons, Kiko and Tommy should be granted a writ of habeas corpus and their detainers should have the burden of showing the lawful justification of their current confinement.”
Tommy is a male chimpanzee whom the NhRP discovered living alone in a cage in a shed on a used trailer lot along Route 30 in Gloversville, New York.
Kiko is a male chimpanzee, who, to the best of the NhRP’s knowledge, is held in captivity in a cage in a cement storefront attached to a home in a residential area in Niagara Falls, New York.
The NhRP has been fighting since 2013 to free them to Save the Chimps sanctuary, where they can live with other chimpanzees in a more natural environment where their fundamental right to bodily liberty will be respected.
The NhRP expects the Court to rule on its motion for permission to appeal in 6-8 weeks.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, headed by lawyer Stephen Wise, has been filing lawsuits on behalf of Tommy and other chimpanzees who are being held in terrible conditions that don’t suit their interest. In one such case, NY County Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffee decided against considering chimpanzees legal persons under the common law, writing, “the parameters of legal personhood… [will be focused] on the proper allocation of rights under the law, asking, in effect, who counts under our law.” Justice Jaffee didn’t want to make this decision via legal fiat, but instead she suggests that it is a matter of public policy that needs to be decided by society, rather than the court. This leaves room for philosophers to enter the conversation, and consider whether chimpanzees are metaphysical persons, regardless of how the common law concept is understood....
In discussions among contemporary analytic philosophers, we find talk of two rough categories of knowledge types: sensations and thoughts. So we might interpret the know thyself advice as directing us to attend to our thoughts and sensations. However, advice is usually given in order to direct us to do things that we might not already be doing, so we should interpret the ancient Greek advice as directing us to do something new. Furthermore, advice is usually given to direct us to do things that we can do.... The starting position in this paper is that adopting the methods of Pluralistic Folk Psychology for our own minds will lead us toward understanding the types of self-knowledge we can have. Once we know what self-knowledge is knowledge about, we will be in a better position to begin analyzing whether any types of knowledge of the self are accurate, or whether accuracy is achievable. The end result of this investigation will offer us insights into what is of value in self-knowledge, and into the nature of the self.
In my book Do Apes Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology, I challenge this view, arguing that we don’t see others as bags of skin filled with hidden beliefs. Rather we see others as fully fleshed out people with histories, social contexts, personalities, moods, emotions, and so forth. Drawing on research from social psychology, developmental psychology, and animal cognition I draw a rich picture of human social cognition, and demonstrate how we solve our interpersonal predictive tasks much in the same way other apes (such as orangutans and chimpanzees) solve theirs. It turns out we are more like the other apes than we thought! While humans can read minds, we don’t need to do it very often to predict behavior, but rather we do it to explain behavior, and the evolution of this ability arose alongside the evolution of morality. Whether the other apes try to explain behavior, and hence whether they think about others’ thoughts or what others should do is an open research question.