Penn,+Hollyoak+and+Povinelli


 * Darwin's mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds**

Summary:

In this article, Penn et al. argue that the prevailing wisdom that there is a direct continuity between animal minds and human minds is false. They argue that there is in fact a discontinuity between the two. They argue that the gap is obvious in the ability of humans and animals to process or use a physical symbol system.

Many researchers see cognition as a spectrum, with animals (including humans) at different points on the scale, but all working with the same kind of thinking. The paper repeatedly quotes Darwin's belief that the difference is "one of degree and not of kind." Penn et al. claim that though there are many striking similarities between human and nonhuman cognition, "only humans form genera l categories based on structural rather than perceptual criteria, ﬁnd analogies between perceptually disparate relations, dra w inferences based on the hierarchical or logical relation between relations, cognize the abstract functional role played by constituents in a relation as distinct from the constituents’ perceptual characteristics, or postulate relations involving unobservable causes such as mental sta tes and hypothetical physical forces" (p. 2).

Studies have shown that while animals may demonstrate some competency in analogical relationships, logical "rules," higher-order spatial relationships, transitive relationships, hierarchical relationships, casual relationships, and Theory of Mind, that competency is rudimentary and not comparable to human competency, if it is there at all.

Vocabulary:

Notes:

"Being able to process recursive operations over hierarchical relations is unarguably a key prerequisite for using a human language" (p. 117).

"Furthermore, there is still no evidence that symbol-trained animals are any more adept than symbol-naive ones at reasoning about unobservable casual forces, mental states, analogical inferences, or any of the other tasks that require the ability to cognize higher-order relations in a systematic, structural fashion" (p. 122).

"The ability to reason about higher-order structural relations in a systematic and productive fashion is a necessary - but not sufficient - condition for the normal development and full realization of these other capabilities in human subjects" (p. 128).

Similarity- Penn, et al discuss the ability of nonhuman animals to differentiate between objects, recognize similar similarities (relational similarity: dog and dog house similar to bird and nest), and to perform analogical reasoning in comparison with human abilities. Penn, et al believe that humans "possess a qualitatively distinct system for reinterpreting sameness and difference in a logical and abstract fashion" (p. 113). Analogical reasoning in nonhuman animals has been exhibited by one chimpanzee, but there is controversy over whether or not she actually was capable of analogical reasoning or if she was simply able to match features herself. The question is how she learned to relate the objects.

“ we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds” … “But we do not doubt that both evolved through standard evolutionary mechanisms”

Most important is to identify what are the similarities and dissimilarities between human and nonhuman cognition... Comparing cognitive abilities between species is complex and hard to determine because the functions are so different. The functions of specific species provide different abilities practical for that species.

It can be agreed that, “All similarities and differences in biology are ultimately a matter of degree” Human cognition differs greatly from other species, generally and analytically. Back to the same fact that humans are not smarter or better, but humans and non humans cannot be compared in every aspect because they are not the same.

Rules-

Since Darwin's evolutionary model was accepted as the regular scientific theory of evolution, the differences between humans and nonhumans has been closeted and the similarities highlighted. Penn argues that the differences tell us more than the similarities, and, although he accounts for the "holes" in his argument, he tests these differences in cognition using the neural network model LISA (hybrid-symbolic-connectionist architecture), demonstrating that higher-order relational capabilities of a PSS can be grafted onto a neurally plausible, distributed connectionist architecture.

His RR (rational reinterpretation) hypothesis is grounded in the idea that only humans possess the representational processes for systematically reinterpreting first-order perceptual relations in terms of structures found in PSS. Penn points out the flaws in the PSS system: one important principle that a PSS assumes in that mental representations are symbolic, when that is a scientifically debated assumption. The basis of the RR hypothesis lies within Penn's theory that humans are the only animal that can reinterpret the world in terms of unobservable causal forces and mental states.