for Brain and BehavioralSciences: "Darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and
nonhuman minds," by Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak and Daniel J.
Povinelli.
Their abstract:
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Discontinuities between Human and Animal Cognition
Premack offers a stimulating brief essay (PDF here) pointing out that recent
cognitive studies finding abilities in animals once thought unique to humans
should not lead us to confuse similarity with equivalence, for the human brain
has nerve cell types and connections not found in any other animals. He examines
eight cognitive areas to argue that dissimilarities are large. Here is his
abstract:
Microscopic study of the human brain has revealed neural
structures, enhanced wiring, and forms of connectivity among nerve cells not
found in any animal, challenging the view that the human brain is simply an
enlarged chimpanzee brain. On the other hand, cognitive studies have found
animals to have abilities once thought unique to the human. This suggests a
disparity between brain and mind. The suggestion is misleading. Cognitive
research has not kept pace with neural research. Neural findings are based on
microscopic study of the brain and are primarily cellular. Because cognition
cannot be studied microscopically, we need to refine the study of cognition by
using a different approach. In examining claims of similarity between animals
and humans, one must ask: What are the dissimilarities? This approach prevents
confusing similarity with equivalence. We follow this approach in examining
eight cognitive cases—teaching, short-term memory, causal reasoning, planning,
deception, transitive inference, theory of mind, and language—and find, in all
cases, that similarities between animal and human abilities are small,
dissimilarities large. There is no disparity between brain and
mind.
Another major article on this topic is in draft form for Brain and Behavioral
Sciences: "Darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and
nonhuman minds," by Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak and Daniel J.
Povinelli.
Their abstract:
for Brain and BehavioralSciences: "Darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and
nonhuman minds," by Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak and Daniel J.
Povinelli.
Their abstract:
Over the last quarter-century, the dominant tendency in
comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between
human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as “one of degree and
not of kind” (Darwin 1871). In the present paper, 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. To
wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and
nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic,
relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (Newell 1980). We show that
this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition
and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language
or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level specification
of where human and nonhuman animals’ abilities to approximate a PSS are similar
and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent
symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that
underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds.
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