From: danny@orthanc.cs.su.oz.au (Danny)
Subject: Book Review - How Monkeys See the World
Reply-To: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 05:33:25 GMT
Followup-To: sci.biology

How Monkeys See the World
Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth
Chicago University Press 1990
pp. 377

_How Monkeys See the World_ is about one of those questions that has
always intrigued people - how much do animals understand about the
world?  It concentrates on vervet monkeys (the authors' own fieldwork was
done on groups of vervet monkeys in Amboseli national park, Kenya), but
it also draws on studies of other primate species - in the wild, in
captivity, and in laboratory experiments.  Comparisons are made
throughout with non-primate species.  

Since the questions being asked are of a difficult nature - Are monkeys
self-conscious?  Do they have emotions?  etc. - methodological issues are
important.  The authors eschew an explicitly behaviourist approach, but
are very careful when interpreting anecdotal evidence of monkey
behaviour.  They are conservative in their claims for monkey
intentionality, with the result that what they do claim seems
convincing.  

The book starts of by looking at vervet monkeys - their ecology, social
hierarchy, behaviour, and vocalisations.  This is then used to look more
generally at such things as deception and attribution, using these
behaviours to obtain insight into monkeys' mental processes.

The conclusion the authors draw is that monkeys have at least first order
intentionality - ie they have emotions, mental states, etc. - and a very
good understanding of monkey behaviour.  It is also argued that monkey
vocalisations do have meaning and form a rudimentary "language".
However there is no clear evidence that monkeys know that other monkeys
have mental states, or that they have self-awareness.  The evidence for
this kind of second order intentionality is most convincing (but still
equivocal) for chimpanzees, and there seem to be qualitative differences
between monkeys and apes.  

Intelligence in primates is domain specific - restricted to certain
areas of application and not generally accessible.  Social problems are
often more adeptly solved than non-social ones, and it seems likely that
a major selective force acting in the evolution of human intelligence
was the need to understand and organise social interactions.  The ideas
presented have interesting consequences for the origins of human
language.  

This is a very very interesting book, and anyone interested in cognitive
psychology, human evolution, linguistics or ethology (or even just
monkeys!) will want to read it.  A minor complaint is that all references
to evolution seem to assume a fairly naive adaptionist viewpoint (but
then maybe I've just been reading too much Stephen Jay Gould :-).  


6/11/92


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