The Behaviour Reading Demon

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Hare et al (2001, figure 1)

Recall this experiment. Could we explain success without appeal to the idea that chimpanzees can ascribe knowledge and ignorance?

‘an intelligent chimpanzee could simply use the behavioural abstraction […]: ‘Joe was present and oriented; he will probably go after the food. Mary was not present; she probably won’t.’’

\citep{Povinelli:2003bg}

Povinelli and Vonk (2003)

What’s that?

\begin{quote} For any food (x) and agent (y), if any of the following do not hold: (i) the agent (y) was present when the food (x) was placed, (ii) the agent (y) was oriented to the food (x) when it was placed, and: (iii) the agent (y) can go after the food (x) then probably not: (iv) the agent (y) will go after the food (x). Also, if all of (i)–(iii) do hold, then probably (iv). \end{quote}

For any food (x) and agent (y), if any of the following do not hold:

(i) the agent (y) was present when the food (x) was placed,

(ii) the agent (y) was oriented to the food (x) when it was placed,

and:

(iii) the agent (y) can go after the food (x)

then probably not:

(iv) the agent (y) will go after the food (x).

Doesn’t work as it stands because in the ‘misinformed’ condition the dominant was oriented to the food when it was first placed (just not when it was subsequently moved).

Right way to formulate this is tricky: should we say last placed? Or should we say when the food was last placed at its current location, the dominant was oriented to the food there?

Predicting a non-behaviour is particularly challenging.

There are some conditions which could trump this; for example, if the food is in a place where food is has recently been found, or if the food is particularly smelly or noisy, or if a trail of grapes leads to the food ...

So is the hypothesis that chimps ignore all such further factors, or do we think that this claim should be elaborated?

Also, if all of (i)–(iii) do hold, then probably (iv).

‘Don't go after food if a dominant who is present has oriented towards it’

\citep[p.~735]{Penn:2007ey}

Penn and Povinelli (2007, 735)

By shifting from a prediction of the dominant’s behaviour to a restriction on how the subordinate behaves, a lot of the problems vanish. But this clearly not an interesting proposal: to see why, we need to think about scientific methodology (predicting vs retrodicting the order in which people entered the room).

Maybe it’s not necessary that we actually construct detailed accounts of how each task is solved using behavioural rules. Following Povinelli and colleagues, Lurz has argued that the sorts of experiments we have been considering are in principle incapable of eliminating a hypothesis about behaviour reading ...

‘since mental state attribution in [nonhuman] animals will (if extant) be based on observable features of other agents’ behaviors and environment ... every mindreading hypothesis has ... a complementary behavior-reading hypothesis.

Such a hypothesis proposes that the animal relies upon certain behavioral/environmental cues to predict [... the behaviour which], on the mindreading hypothesis, the animal is hypothesized to use as its observable grounds for attributing the mental state in question.’

\citep[p.~26]{lurz:2011_mindreading}; also \citep[p.~453]{lurz:2011_how}

Lurz (2011, 26)

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