dan michaels  wrote:

> "Robert Karl Stonjek"  wrote...
> > Chimpanzee minds: suspiciously human?
> > Daniel J. Povinelli and Jennifer Vonk
> > Chimpanzees undoubtedly form concepts related to the statistical
> > regularities in behavior. But do they also construe such abstractions in
> > terms of mental states - that is, do they possess a 'theory of mind'?
> ...............
> 
> 
> This may be, but from what I have read, in many situations, it takes
> weeks or months to train a chimp to do what a child can be trained to
> do in just a few minutes.
> 
> So, despite the great similarities in overall brain structure and DNA
> content, etc, SOMETHING fundamental is missing in what these people
> are saying. What can that be?
> 
Cortical folds? The point is not whether or not chimps have *as much* of
something that we previously thought to be human cognitive capabilities,
but whether they have them at all. This is like discovering that
fruitflies can learn - it is not that they learn so little, but that
learning can be extended so far. Chimps are the nearest examples of
human cognitive skills outside humankind. It is not to be wondered at
that they don't go as far as humans in a human-defined and derived
direction. What is amazing is that, just as Darwin predicted in
_Expression of the Emotions_, chimps and other related organisms have
aspects of what was once thought to be uniquely human mental powers.

-- 
John Wilkins
"And this is a damnable doctrine" - Charles Darwin, Autobiography
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