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The Confusion of the Animalists, by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D. (Continued)
12. Future experimenters will have the criteria they need to make an accurate appraisal and correct interpretation of their data, and so avoid the confusions rampant among the current animalists, only if two basic distinctions become clear to them. 12a. The first is the distinction between naming by description and naming by acquaintance. These represent two quite distinct ways in which human infants acquire name-words and increase their vocabularies. [15] 12a(i). On the one hand, children do so by direct perceptual acquaintance with the object named, as when the child acquires the word dog as the name for the animal that is lying at her feet, or the word candy for the sweet being held out to him, or the word mama for the person who is holding him tight. These are all perceptual objects, immediately present to the child; he learns the new word by hearing an adult impose it as the name or designative sign for the object with which he is perceptually acquainted. 12a(ii). On the other hand, very young children also acquire new name-words when the object named is not perceptually present and even when they have never had any perceptual acquaintance with the object named. They are able to acquire new name-words, the referential significance of which they can understand as a result of having the object named verbally described to them. For example, when a child asks about the meaning of the word kindergarten on being told that he or she is going to be sent to kindergarten before ever having had the experience of being in one, the verbal description of kindergarten as "a place where you go to play with other children" will add the word kindergarten to the child's vocabulary as a significant name-word. 12a(iii). The very young child, with whose linguistic performances the animalists compare those of chimpanzees, acquires namewords by verbal description as well as by perceptual acquaintance -- not only name-words such as sister or brother for a perceptual object that has not yet been perceived because the forthcoming sibling has not yet been born, but also name-words for such imperceptible objects as just and unjust, right and wrong, good and bad. Without being able to acquire names by verbal description of the objects named, the human child would be unable to acquire name-words for imperceptible objects. 12b. The second distinction is that between categorematic and syncategorematic words, or name-words and linguistic operators. [16] 12b(i). The categorematic words of human language are the parts of speech traditionally classified as nouns, verbs, adjectives -- the words that name or designate both perceptual and also imperceptible objects. 12b(ii). The syncategorematic words of human language are the parts of speech traditionally classified as particles, and subdivided into definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and disjunctions; they also include such logical operators as "is," "is not," "if ... then ...," "not both," and so on. 12c. As it is true that without the ability to acquire names by verbal description, the use of language to refer to imperceptible objects would be impossible, so it is also true that without the ability to use syncategorematic words, syntactical speech -- the construction of grammatically complete and correct sentences -- would also be impossible. 13. Recent work on chimpanzees does not include evidence that chimpanzees can acquire names by verbal description as contrasted with acquiring names by perceptual acquaintance, nor does it include evidence that chimpanzees can learn to use syncategorematic words (grammatical and logical operators). Hence we must conclude, so far as experimental results show, that the linguistic performance of chimpanzees does not indicate their possession of the power of conceptual thought, nor does it indicate their ability to engage in syntactical speech. The sentences formed by chimpanzees bear some resemblance to the sentences found in human speech, but that is as far as it goes. In addition, what chimpanzees can talk about (perceptual objects only) indicates a critical deficiency on their part, even as compared with the speech of very young children, who can refer to imperceptible as well as perceptual objects. Future research may change the picture and support the contention of the animalists. But it will do so only if the evidence warrants the animalist in answering the following questions affirmatively -- questions which must now, in the light of present evidence, be answered negatively. 13a. Can chimpanzees acquire name-words by verbal description as well as by perceptual acquaintance, and among the name-words thus acquired, do some refer to imperceptible objects or do all refer to perceptual objects? 13b. Can chimpanzees acquire syncategorematic as well as categorematic words, and can they learn to use such words to form syntactically complete and grammatically correct sentences? 13c. The two foregoing questions provide the criteria for judging whether or not chimpanzees have the power of syntactical speech and a range of name-words that requires us to infer that they have the power of conceptual thought. There are, however, two other questions which should be considered by the animalist; and if, now or in the future, he answers them negatively, he should ask himself, "If not, why not?" 13c(i). Do chimpanzees in their native habitat acquire any form of language that involves using signs that function as name-words (restricted to perceptual objects) and involves making sentences that bear some remote resemblance to sentences in human syntactical speech? 13c(ii). In captivity and under human tutelage, can one chimpanzee impart to another chimpanzee the kind of linguistic attainments that it has acquired as a result of being trained by human beings? 14. Even if, now and in the foreseeable future, the evidence remains definitely in favor of the position of the humanist and adverse to the position of the animalist, the difference in kind between men and apes, dolphins, or other animals may be only a superficial rather than a radical difference in kind. 14a. It is superficial if the power of conceptual thought uniquely present in men is possessed by them only because of their vastly superior degree of brain power. 14b. It is a radical difference in kind only if the power of conceptual thought uniquely present in man cannot be adequately explained in terms of brain power but must involve the positing of some other factor present in man and not present in other animals. [17] 15. The solution of this problem -- whether the difference in kind between man and other animals is superficial or radical -- will never be found or even approached by means of experimental work on animals, but only through another kind of experimental work (on artificial intelligence) and through the construction of "thinking machines" which will simulate syntactical speech and be able to engage in conversation with human beings. [18] To sum up: the confusion manifested by the animalists arises from three failures of understanding on their part. In the first place, they fail to understand that the difference of man does not rest on comparative evidence of human and animal behavior solely in the sphere of communication or language. In the second place, they fail to understand that, even in the sphere of language, the critical question to be answered is whether the linguistic performance of chimpanzees justifies and necessitates the attribution to them of the power of conceptual thought, as the syntactical speech of men does. In the third place, they fail to understand that, until it can be proved that the difference in kind between men and other animals is radical rather than superficial (which for logical reasons may be forever impossible [19]), the existence of a merely superficial difference in kind between men and apes or other mammals in no way interrupts the continuity of nature since that continuity remains in the spectrum of degrees of underlying brain power, nor does it raise any new questions about the origin of the human species from ancestors shared with anthropoid apes, by natural causes operating in the evolutionary process.
Notes: [1] This book, by Eugene Linden (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1974), reports and appraises all the recent work done on the linguistic performances of chimpanzees. It reviews evidence accumulated since I wrote The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967) - hereinafter cited as DOM. I will in subsequent footnotes cite chapter and pages in DOM in order to acquaint the reader with the state of scientific evidence and opinion prior to the recent researches on chimpanzees, as well as for my own critical appraisal of scientific evidence and opinion at the time I wrote DOM. [2] Although the new evidence accumulated since 1967 does not alter my adherence to the humanist position as defended in DOM, it does require me to make a sharper and more precise statement of the argument for the humanist position and against the animalist position than I made in DOM. The present essay, therefore, corrects a number of inaccuracies and imprecisions in the earlier statement of the argument. [3] See Jacob Bronowski, The Identity of Man (Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1965), pp. 11-12, 48; and George and Muriel Beadle, The Language of Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1966), pp. 39, 41. [4] See DOM, pp. 101-2, 106, 110. [5] These three propositions make man superior to all other living organisms -- superior in kind, not just in degree -- but that is quite consistent with man's being not only the best but also the worst of animals, either best or worst because of the use he makes of his superior powers. See Aristotle Politics 1. 2. I253a 31-34: "Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends" (GBWW - Great Books of the Western World - , Vol. 9, p. 446). [6] See DOM, chap. 6. [7] See DOM, pp. 114-18. [8] See DOM, chap. 10. [9] For a fuller exposition of this matter, see DOM, chap. 10, especially pp. 152-64. [10] Ibid. pp. 160-61. [11] See DOM. chap. 11.pp.180-90. [12] "Man is the only animal whom [nature] has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in animals, for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further, the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust" (Aristotle Politics, 1. 2. 1253a 9-14; GBWW,. Vol. 9, p. 446). Allowing for some factual inaccuracies in this early statement of the humanist position, the quoted passage can be construed as drawing a sharp line between animal communication about perceptual objects and human speech which extends beyond this to conceptual objects, such as the expedient and the inexpedient, the just and the unjust. In addition to such conceptual objects of moral and political discourse, it extends to all the conceptual objects of scientific discourse. Even more distinctive of the unique range of human speech is the range of symbolic objects referred to in poetical discourse. On this next point, see the recent book by George Steiner, After Babel, Aspects of Language and Translation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975): "I believe that the communication of information, of ostensive and verifiable 'facts,' constitutes only one part, and perhaps a secondary part, of human discourse. The potentials of fiction, of counterfactuality, of undecidable futurity profoundly characterize both the origins and nature of speech. They differentiate it ontologically from the many signal systems available to the animal world." [13] Some years ago, after delivering a lecture at the Aspen Institute in which I defended the humanist position concerning the difference of man, Professor Walter Orr Roberts, the astronomer, who was present, asked me how I would respond if a chimpanzee who had listened to the lecture stood up and said, "Professor Adler, I agree with what you have said about the difference between men and chimpanzees." I replied that I would tell the chimpanzee that he was either a fool or a liar -- a fool, if he didn't realize that his statement at the end of my lecture showed that the humanist position was wrong; a liar, if he did realize it. [14] The proposition advanced by Professor Frank E. X. Dance in his contribution to this Symposium parallels the proposition advanced in this paper. Professor Dance and I agree that the linguistic performances of men and other animals are different in kind, not in degree, although he uses the phrase speech communication for what uniquely characterizes the human performance, and I use the phrase syntactical speech for it. [15] For a fuller exposition of this matter, see my forthcoming book Some Questions About Language (La Salle, III.: Open Court, 1975), chap. 3. q. 5. [16] Ibid., q. 6. [17] For a fuller exposition of this matter, see DOM, pp. 27-35. [18] Ibid., chaps. 12-14. [19] Ibid., chap. 15.
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